How Did I Get Here?
by Evey Edge
Summary: Rachel Matheson and General Monroe are enemies fifteen years after the Blackout, but the President of the Republic can remember a time when that wasn't so. Once they shared a love that was as deep as it was doomed. Read on to learn how that love shaped Bass' past and will impact his future. AU with dual timelines. Bass/Rachel romantically and Bass/Charlie generally.
1. Dessert Before Dinner

The two marines stood before the egg shell colored door. Their civilian clothes were slightly rumpled from the long flight. The first man unconsciously ran his hand over his short curly hair, eying the door skeptically.

"Is this the right apartment?" The second man, with darker hair and sterner features, pulled a crumpled piece of white paper from his pocket. He checked the number he'd recorded against the gold number secured to the door.

"Yep."

"Well, there's no smoke coming out from under the door this year, so that's a good sign." Bass vividly recalled last Thanksgiving's escapades. It had been fortunate for Ben that Miles was so handy with a fire extinguisher, or more than turkey would have ended up charcoal.

"Easy on my brother's cooking, Home Economics wasn't your best class either, as I recall." It was true that Bass hadn't excelled in the domestic arts, although he had managed to scrap by with a B minus, largely due to the generous assistance of his cooking partner. She been incredibly helpful in the kitchen and in return he'd tutored her in French and by French, he didn't mean the language.

"I'm just saying it's not too late for all of us to go to Dennys." Bass could swear that just last week he had finally dislodged a piece of charred turkey from his teeth that had been preserved there since last November.

"My brother believes in home cooked holiday meals and ever since Mom died…"

Bass was instantly contrite. Bass had been orphaned as a toddler and grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home. He'd learned charm as a means of social survival. When his deadbeat foster dad forgot to give him lunch money, he'd covered by going on about how he couldn't believe the other student could touch cafeteria food and how he had a buffet of oven fresh cookies that would be waiting for him when he got home. Everyone seemed to buy his act, with the notable exception of Miles.

Bass would never forget the day he knew that Miles Mathson would be his best friend for life. Miles had sat at Bass's table for two months, but had never spoken a word to him. Bass didn't take it personally, Miles rarely spoke to anyone. If he hadn't been so good at sports, Miles undoubtedly would have been labeled a loser loner. The fact that he WAS an all-star athlete earned him a seat at the table, but the boys had long since given up trying to engage him in conversation. Miles generally sat at the end of the bench, eating his lunch in silence, seemingly obviously to the world around him.

On the day in question, Bass had deliberated dawdled at the bathroom, wanting to arrive to late so that his friends would be so caught up in their own meals and conversation, they wouldn't notice he was going without lunch for the third day in a row. Bass had slid down on the bench next to Miles, grateful that no one's eyes were on him. He couldn't have been more shocked when a stack of homemade cookies, wrapped in clear plastic appeared in his lap.

He'd frowned, looking to his right, when Bryan Rhynebeck was flicking a paper football at Sean Morris' head. Bryan had the cafeteria's hard plastic tray in front of him. No homemade cookies could have come from that direction. He turned to his left, where Miles was methodically munching his way through a tuna fish sandwich. The brown paper bag that had held his lunch lay crumpled and empty in front of him.

Bass had stared at Miles a few moments, watching him chew while his eyes remained fixed on some unseen point on the cafeteria's far wall. Finally Miles had turned, looked Bass directly in the eyes and raised an eyebrow. In that instant Bass realized that while Miles might not have been big on words, he sure knew how to communicate. All it took was one raised eyebrow for Bass to receive the message, "What are you waiting for, a written invitation? Eat the cookies, stupid." Feeling vaguely sheepish, Bass had taken a bite and discovered they were delicious.

In the months that followed Bass learned that Ben's and Miles' dad had split when Ben was seven and Miles was three. Their mother slaved at two jobs to keep the family financially afloat and yet, she's still found time to make her boys hearty home cooked meals. The first time Miles had brought Bass home for dinner she welcomed him with open arms and a full, steaming plate. When she'd died three ago, Bass felt like he'd been orphaned a second time.

"Don't even listen to me, man. I'm just jealous you have family to share a burnt bird with." Bass wished he'd kept his stupid mouth shut for once. He'd choke down worse things than blackened turkey to honor the memory of the woman who'd given him the closest thing to a mother's love that he would ever experience in his lifetime.

"So long as I'm alive, you'll always have family." Miles knocked on the door, before Bass could respond. Typical Miles, to say something verging on sentimental and then become totally incapable of making eye contact until the subject was changed.

"So, tonight's the night we meet the famous girlfriend? What's her name again? Rebecca?" Ben had been routinely communicating the details of this girl to Miles for the past 10 weeks. Miles, naturally had been relying it piece meal to Bass, who'd had less than no interest in the information.

"Rachel. And be nice, he really serious about this one." Since when was Ben not serious about anything?

"If you ask me he's too young to be settling down. He needs to live a little. Experience everything the world has to offer." Bass liked Ben, despite the fact he was more than a little straight-laced, and on occasion a bit preachy. Ben shouldn't be tying himself down now, while he was still in his twenties. He could easily wait another decade or even two before resigning himself to the altar. Ben had graduated at the top of his class at the University of Chicago, been fast-tracked through his Masters programs and was months away from completing his doctorate. He was smart, dependable, soon to be well-employed. He was exactly the sort of guy women wanted to 'settle down' with, so there was no harm in Ben's keeping his options open for a little while longer.

"Nobody asked you, least of all Ben, so I'd keep your opinions to yourself. Besides you're hardly one to offer advice. It's not like your track record with women is stellar." Miles shot Bass his patented double arched eyebrows.

"What are you talking about? Women love me." Bass couldn't believe his best friend's pronouncement. Whenever he and Miles returned from duty and hit the nearest bar, Bass, without fail, ended the evening with either a phone number or an out and out invitation back to some woman's place.

"Yeah, for a weekend or two, before they figure out what a bum you are." It was certainly true that Bass' encounters didn't have much of a shelf life, but then he didn't want them to. Ask any so-called happy couple and they will tell you that the first few weeks of their relationship were the most fun and exciting. That was what Bass got, again and again and again. He was never forced to endure the domestication of a relationship, where the arguments and the boredom set in. In Bass' eyes his love life was perfect.

Suddenly the door opened and revealed a slender woman with a mouth that quirked up at the corner as though there was some joke being told that only she could hear. For some reason the sight of her left Bass feeling temporarily stunned, like someone had smack the back of his skull with a two by four.

"Hi, I'm Rachel. I know one of you is Miles and the other is Bass." Bass struggled to assume his typical devil-may-care smile, fighting against whatever fog had suddenly overtaken his brain.

"Care to guess who's who?" There, that seemed normal, light. Bass glanced at Miles out of the corner of his eye. His best friend didn't seem to notice anything peculiar.

"Hmmm…give me a few minutes, and I bet I can figure it out. Why don't you both come in?" Bass let Miles step through first, in order to put as much space between himself and the woman as possible. Rachel, her named was Rachel, continued, totally obvious of the chaos she'd created in Bass' head, "Sorry about leaving you waiting out there. We were in the middle of pulling the pies out of the oven." Bass inhaled, hoping the smell of burnt crust would distract him from his inner turmoil. Instead of smoke his nostrils were greeted with the smell of baking apple.

"Pies from the oven? You mean non-store bought pies?" Miles sounded as surprised as Bass felt. Apparently in all of his letters Ben hadn't mentioned his girlfriend could bake.

"Apple, Pumpkin, and Banana Cream. The turkey needs another hour before it's ready, but I thought we could all sneak a little dessert in before the main meal." Bass's last 'girlfriend' had had a conniption when he'd told her he wanted to go to I-Hop for dinner. She'd had very specific rules about when and in what order food must be consumed. She had explained these rules at length until he'd been forced to manufacture a military emergency that required his immediate presence back at the base.

"Dessert before dinner? Pinch me, I think I'm in love." The words had flown out of his mouth before he'd had the sense to stop them. There was nothing to be done, but play it off like he was just being his usually roguish self.

"I'm going to take a wild guess that you're Bass." He had never so liked hearing the sound of his own name.

"How you'd know?"

"From Ben's description of you." Bass' mind immediately began to race with all the unflattering stories about him Ben could have recounted to Rachel. He was torn between worrying about what details Ben had shared and worrying about the fact he cared so much.

"How did he describe me? Let me guess, 'unbelievably handsome and charming?'" Rachel's blue-grey eyes seemed to stare right down into him with such an unnatural intensity that in the moment he would have sworn she could see each and every thought he had ever had or ever would have.

"Completely full of shit." No doubt about it, Bass was screwed.


	2. Sleepless Nights

Monroe's eyes flew open. Cotton sheets were tangled around his naked body. He instinctively glanced to his right, but there was no one lying beside him. He'd sent away that evening's companion hours before. He couldn't remember what her name had been. The only thing he knew for certain was that she'd been blonde. They were always blonde. There had been a time when he wasn't nearly so particular, but that period in his life had ended more than two decades ago. Perhaps it was time to return to his old custom. Perhaps it was time to let go.

The general pulled on a black robe and crossed the room to the curtains that were drawn over his window. He thrust them aside and looked out over a sleeping Philadelphia. The only things he could see in the black were the small moving lights shed by the patrolling officers' torches. The homes, traders' market, and barracks seemed quiet and at peace. Monroe wished he could say the same of himself.

When he'd established Philadelphia as the capital of the Monroe Republic, Monroe had embraced the historic significance of the city. It was here that over two hundred years ago a group of men established a new nation that had grown into the most powerful country in the world. When that nation finally fell, Monroe thought it was only fitting that the government that replaced it would be run from here.

When Monroe had studied the American Revolution in school, he'd never paid very much attention. He'd scoffed at the idea that anything his teacher tried to impart about that time would have any connection to his life. About thirty years later Monroe felt that he had more in common with the founding fathers than he did with anyone else on the planet. Those men had carried the burden of a fledging nation on their back. They had known the ugly conflict of brother against brother. They had known the constant threat of scavengers ready to strike at the first scent of weakness. Weakness. That seemed to be Monroe's word of the day.

His lieutenant hadn't been aiming the word at Monroe, yet it had stung his conscious. His men were dying, and the Republic civilians were in constant jeopardy, all because he had been soft. It was the general's secret shame, that he'd been willing to let others suffer and die so he could hold on to a selfish hope that was never coming true.

Today he had put an end to that. At last Monroe had put his emotions in a tight locked box and done what had needed to be done. His efforts had been rewarded, Monroe was at last on the trail of a solution to all of his nation's problems. His sleep should have been deep and untroubled. It should have been, but it wasn't. Why had he had that dream, tonight of all nights?

Monroe knew that the past had no place in present, yet his subconscious seemed to be subverting that self-imposed edict. The general supposed he should have expected his psyche's rebellion. Betrayal by his own mind seemed the next logical step following the treason of Rachel and Miles. Suddenly Monroe felt thirsty. He could go to his dresser, pour himself a Scotch, and let it turn the lingering remnants of his dream into an indistinct blur.

No. he couldn't do that. Liquor was one of the few indulgences he allowed himself. It was a luxury, not a painkiller. He could overcome this brief moment of despondence without alcohol's assistance. He would climb back into bed, close his eyes, and acquire much needed rest. He would awaken rejuvenated, ready to continue the perpetual task of preserving what he had built. He wouldn't dream of her again.


	3. Snowed In

Rachel stood at the window, peering out at the street below. Her arm crossed the front of her red sweater and her eyebrows were pinched with worry. Bass watched her from his reclined position on the plush sofa. His feet, clad in thick wool socks were resting on the cushions Rachel had vacated to take up her post at the window. He could still feel the heat from where she had sat.

It was nice to sit there and have the freedom to observe her without the danger of getting caught staring. Rachel's long blonde hair was swept back in a ponytail. A short errant strand had escaped and was brushing gently against her cheek. She was beautiful, it was an empirical fact. Still, Bass knew he had known equally beautiful women before and furthermore Rachel wasn't at all his type. Bass typically enjoyed the company of exuberant party girls. Rachel was a reserved academic. She wore sneakers and jeans, not stilettos and mini-skirts. Despite this, Bass found the sight of Rachel in a sweater sexier than a supermodel in a bikini. What was wrong with him?

Intellectually Bass knew that he couldn't have picked a more unsuitable woman to be attracted to. She was Ben's girlfriend; Ben, who invited Bass into his home year after year; Ben, who had tried to be a surrogate older brother to Bass and keep him out of trouble; Ben, brother to the only person in the world who really loved Bass. Rachel was so off-limits she ought to have come with a flashing red light and a siren.

Bass had hoped the intense spark he'd felt for Rachel would quickly burn out, but it had been 13 months and no dice. He had tried everything he could think of to make himself lose interest. He'd spent that first Thanksgiving constantly in her company, encouraging her to talk to him about anything and everything. He'd exchanged phone numbers with her, so they could keep in contact. He'd reasoned that the more he knew about her, the more likely it was he would discover something to drive him away, something irritating or boring he could use to cure himself of his unhealthy craving. It hadn't worked, nor had his alternate plan of increased "socialization" with other women. His only blessing was the fact Rachel remained impervious to his charms, and oblivious of his interest.

"Miles and Ben should have been back by now." Her eyes never strayed from the glass, and as a result it took Bass a moment to realize she had been talking to him.

"I told you they're fine. Ben doesn't want to risk the roads in the middle of this storm so he and Miles are hunkered down in the mall's food court with a hundred other Christmas Eve shoppers." Ben had been waiting when Bass and Miles had exited their plane terminal. He'd dropped Bass off at his and Rachel's apartment with the explanation that he needed Miles' help with some last minute purchases. Bass figured Ben had just wanted a little alone time with his brother. He was happy to oblige, given that it meant Bass would have Rachel to himself for at least an hour. Then the weather had taken a turn for the worse and one hour had turned into four.

"They shouldn't have gone out in the first place." In Bass' opinion Rachel was worrying over nothing. Ben and Miles were safely sequestered together until the roads cleared. Bass was far more concerned with the fact he was trapped here alone with Rachel for far longer than he'd anticipated. The odds he'd do something incredibly stupid rose exponentially the longer he was in her company.

"You can tell them that when they get back, but I'd wait until after you've opened whatever it is they got you." Rachel turned and looked at him sharply, eyes narrowed.

"You don't know they're shopping for me."

"Maybe I do, or maybe I don't." Bass' teasing had the intended effect. Rachel completely turned her back on the window and aimed her laser beam-like focus at him.

"Come on, Bass, tell me." Bass lazily stretched his arms back, then laced his fingers together and placed them behind his head.

"You'll never make me talk." Rachel expression of exasperation was quickly replaced with one of mischief. Rachel never resisted a challenge.

"Is that so?" She stalked toward him like a panther closing in on her prey andl lowered herself onto the cushion Bass's feet had been occupying. Bass slide his leg toward the back of the sofa so she would have more space. Rachel fixed her unblinking eyes on his.

I'm a marine, I've been trained to withstand brutal interrogation, so the staring thing isn't going to work on me." Suddenly Rachel grabbed his left foot, yanked off the sock and began tickling him mercilessly.

"Not the foot, not the foot! Geneva Convention violation! Okay, okay, I give up. " Bass raised his hands in surrender. Grinning from ear to ear Rachel released his foot from her iron grip and flung his sock at his face. Bass caught the soft projectile and swung both his legs down to the floor. He shot her a glare as he pulled the sock back over his exposed appendage.

"Using my Achilles' heel that I divulged to you under the strictest of confidences. Shame on you."

"Consider it supplementary interrogation training. Your enemy will try and exploit whatever weaknesses you have."

"I won't have told you how ticklish I was if I thought you were my enemy." Maybe that was how he should start thinking of Rachel. She was, after all the greatest threat to his happiness that he had ever faced.

"Let that be a lesson to you on how easily a friend can become an enemy, given the right set of circumstances." In Bass' mind he pictured Ben and Miles.

"The right circumstances being…" What would happen if he acted on his impulses? He'd lose Ben certainly, but what about Miles? Would Miles forgive him or would Bass lose him forever?

"You have information that I want. I will obtain it by any means necessary." Bass chuckled at Rachel's attempt at a sinister expression. There was no point in brooding over what ifs. Rachel clearly didn't see Bass the way he saw her and that was the way it would stay.

"The truth is I have no idea what they're shopping for. However, if they are buying something for you, whatever they get you is unlikely to be cooler than my gift."

"Which is?"

"Well, I'm not so sure I'm giving it to you anymore. I only buy presents for my friends."

"I am your friend." Her words were somewhat belayed by the fact they were accompanied by a light punch to his shoulder.

"I thought you just said you were my enemy. You can't have it both ways." Bass rubbed the spot where she's struck, as though her blow had created a terrible bruise.

"Bass, I promise I will always be your friend, even when I'm also your enemy." Rachel extended her right hand to him. Despite her crooked smile, her eyes were serious.

"Thanks, Rachel." Bass grasped her palm. Her skin was soft, warm, and dry. A bolt of electricity rushed up his arm. Bass fought to keep his face neutral while he gave her hand a quick pump and released it.

"You're welcome. Now, what did you get me?"

"A remote control Millennium Falcon." Bass had been to half a dozen stores, trying to figure out what to buy Rachel, when he'd stumbled into a TJ Maxx and found this flying toy on sale. It had seemed like kismet at the time.

"You're kidding me." Rachel's expression of deadpan disbelief made Bass uncertain about the wisdom of his choice. He immediately began to backtrack.

"If you don't want it, or think it's stupid or-" Rachel held up her hand to cut him off mid-sentence.

"Are you kidding, it's fantastic! I've wanted one of those things since I was eight!" Relief poured through him. He hadn't misremembered.

"I know. You mentioned it at Thanksgiving last year. We were talking about childhood favorite movies-" Rachel's smile grew even wider.

"Yes! You said yours was_ The_ _Princess Bride_ and I told you mine was _Empire Strikes Back_-"

"I told you I'd never seen it, and you ordered me to watch all six movies." Bass had watched them as instructed by Rachel, starting with the original Trilogy before moving into the prequels.

"I can't believe you remembered that." Of course he had. Every detail of his short time with Rachel was burned into his brain.

"I'm a soldier, I'm trained to remember commands."

"So you saw them?" Rachel scooted closer to him.

"Yes."

"What did you think?" Bass considered her question. What did he think? He'd watched over 16 hours of spaceships, aliens, and light saber battles. How could he possibly condense that into a single reaction?

"I felt bad for Darth Vader." Rachel blinked, looking completely nonplussed.

"You felt bad for Darth Vader?" She repeated incredulously.

"It's just once you've seen Episodes I, II, and III, you see this whole thing wasn't his fault."

"Sorry, I'm confused, the man killed and tortured god knows how many people, but it wasn't his fault?" When she put it like that it did sound bad, but Bass felt that someone had to stand up for Anakin.

"Everything that happened, happened because he fell in love with Amidala, which wasn't something he could control. He did what he thought he had to so he could save her life." Out of all the characters Bass had identified with Anakin the most; a rebellious kid with a rough childhood and only one close friend who falls in love with someone he shouldn't. Bass could relate.

"That's true, but he ultimately ended up killing her. She died from the grief of watching him become evil. If you want to feel bad for someone, feel bad for her." Bass would admit the scene were Anakin was choking Amidala was maybe the hardest for him to watch, although the final scene with Obi-Wan was definitely a close second.

"There is also what happens with him and Obi-Wan. The closest thing he has to a father or a brother chops off his limbs." Bass couldn't imagine how horrible that had to be, to be reviled by your own family.

"After he kills a bunch of kids."

"I'm not saying he didn't deserve it, just that it was brutal."

"At the end of _Return of the Jedi_ he does get to redeem himself by saving Luke."

"Yes, and then he dies."

"And becomes one with the Force."

"After he dies." That wasn't exactly the happy ending Bass had been hoping for.

"Well, if he hadn't died, it would have made for a pretty uncomfortable reunion with Leia. Can you picture that scene?" Rachel put a hand over her and made a noise that vaguely resembled Vader's mask,

"'Leia, remember when I tortured you for information and allowed that other Empire guy to blow-up your home planet? My bad.'" Rachel's Vader impersonation was too much for Bass. He snorted, causing Rachel to throw a pillow at his head before cracking up herself.

"I still like _The Princess Bride_ has better." This was clearly the wrong thing to say. Rachel stood, no longer laughing and strode into her and Ben's bedroom. When she emerged she was carrying two long cardboard tubes that Bass presumed had been wrapping paper rolls.

"What are you doing?"

"Defending the honor of the Rebel Alliance," She tossed one of the tubes to Bass.

"May the Force be with you." Rachel assumed the pose of a Jedi welding a light saber. Bass grinned, leapt up from the couch, and saluted her with his 'sword'.

"As you wish." They began to fight, lunging and paring around the coffee table. Bass scored the first hit on Rachel's left thigh.

"Why you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking, nerf-herder!" Bass gave a quick bow.

"Please understand I hold you in the highest respect." Rachel advanced on him again before he had time to resume his ready position. Bass was duped by a quick feint to shoulder and Rachel got him solidly in the gut. He rubbed the spot where she's struck him, but her facial expression was more smug than repentant.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing." Bass resumed the on guard pose, determined to finish their little bout victorious. He sprang into action, using his full extension to his advantage. Through a series of cuts and jabs he drove Rachel straight back into the wall that connected the living room and the kitchen. With a final strong beat he knocked her tube aside and leap close with his tube raised over his head at slant so it was barely touching her chest.

"There is a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours." Bass' heartbeat was thumping in his ear as he stared at Rachel. He realized he was breathing hard, harder than he should be after their brief episode of swordplay. Bass lowered his 'sword', but didn't back up. He stood his ground, tried to catch Rachel's gaze, which seemed to be flitting around the room, looking everywhere, but at him.

"I happen to like nice men." Rachel's words were soft, but firm. Bass knew he should step away, laugh, and spout some other line from _The Princess Bride_. He should try anything to cut the tension that had suddenly invaded the air. The problem was he couldn't make himself move.

"I'm nice." Rachel's eyes finally locked on his and Bass had no doubt that she could read everything he'd laid bare for her to see. How much he wanted her. How much he loved her. And it was love, Bass was suddenly certain, because nothing less could have felt this all-consuming, destructive, and doomed.

"No, you're not." He thought he'd been safe, because Rachel didn't see him the way other women did. Rachel saw through the veneer of charm, to the slightly damaged and irresponsible mess that he really was. He'd thought that no one could want him after seeing that. Looking into Rachel's eyes, he suddenly knew he'd been wrong. To say his feelings upon this discovery were conflicted would have been an understatement. He'd never been happier or more miserable in his entire life.

The sound of keys turning the lock broke the spell that had kept Bass frozen in place. Without a word he took his and Rachel's tubes, folded them in half and shoved them in the kitchen's trash bin. Ben burst through the door, carrying two heavy shopping bags.

"Ho, ho, ho! Let Christmas Eve commence!" After a beat Rachel walked up to Ben and planted a kiss on his cheek. Bass adverted his gaze, looking instead at Miles yanking off his boots.

"Hi, honey. I'll take those to the bedroom for you. Why don't you uncork the wine?" Bass could detect the false cheerfulness in her tone, but Ben seemed too caught up in his own good mood to notice.

"Okay, but no peeking into those, there might be something for you in there!" Ben passed the packages over to Rachel his ever good-natured smile.

"I promise." Rachel retreated into the bedroom while Bass stared after her.

"Who wants a holiday drink?" Bass turned to watch Ben pull a red wine from the rack beside the refrigerator.

"I do."


	4. Captain Neville's Debrief

Monroe sat at the oak desk, scribbling orders to Captain Norris regarding the new priority item. The general had enclosed one of the many sketches Rachel had provided him with. Monroe concluded the note emphasizing the importance of discretion while his unit searched for the necklaces. The last thing he needed was for the rebels or spies from the neighboring territories to realize what he was up to. He'd written similar letters to Captains Murphy, Shaw, and McGregor, all men he felt could be relied on.

After signing the paper, Monroe finally acknowledged the man who had been standing at attention in his presence for the past three minutes. Captain Neville's face was carefully impassive, as it always was, but the slightest sheen of perspiration glittered on his brow. Neville had correctly assumed he had not been summoned for a commendation.

"Report." Approximately one year ago Monroe had sent Neville to retrieve Ben and Miles. He'd chosen Tom over his captains, because he was the most relentless and methodical. Despite the captain's history of obtaining results, he'd achieved none of his mission's objectives.

"Sir, my unit departed several months ago to capture Ben and Miles Matheson and escort them both to Philadelphia."

"So where are they?" Captain Neville paused, momentarily disconcerted by Monroe's question.

"Sir?" Neville was undoubtedly wondering why Monroe was asking a question he already knew the answer to. The truth was Monroe wanted to hear how exactly Neville would explain his monumental failures.

"I ordered you not to return to Philadelphia until you had both men in custody, and yet I don't see either of them in your company. Care to enlighten me as to why? "

"As I mentioned in prior communications, there was a complication in the apprehension of Ben Matheson. He died." Monroe fingers tightened around the pen he'd been holding. The captain shifted uneasily in his boots.

"How exactly did he die, Captain, when you had specific orders to bring him to me alive?" Monroe's voice had taken on its dangerously quiet tone. Neville stiffed, straightening his spine a degree further than it had been.

"We were met with resistance." Ben Matheson had been a pacifist both before and after The Blackout. He'd been one of the last of a rare breed.

"Ben Matheson was not the type of man to offer 'resistance'." Monroe pictured Ben Matheson as he'd last seen him, kneeing beside his children's sleeping bags, his soft voice lulling them to sleep. His feelings toward Ben had been…complicated for over twenty years, but he had never wanted the man dead. Ben had been a lynchpin in Monroe's life, even during the years he'd been physically absent. Now that he was gone things were messier than they'd ever been. So many things that Monroe had envisioned for the future were now impossible.

"No, sir, he was not, however his son is. Danny Matheson drew his crossbow and demanded we leave his father alone. One of my men drew in response. Ben Matheson stepped between them. Some the villagers elected to enter the skirmish. Shots were exchanged. Ben Matheson perished along with three other villagers and a Private. We arrested Danny Matheson and began our return with all deliberate speed." Danny Matheson, an unforeseen complication. Clearly Rachel's genes had exerted their influence.

"And Miles?" Unlike Ben, Monroe had never deluded himself that Miles would allow himself to be taken quietly.

"About a mile outside the village I ordered a lieutenant to linger in the surrounding area, in case the locals planned on mounting a rescue attempt. They'd shown more fight than I'd initially anticipated and I didn't wish to be taken off guard. The lieutenant quickly reported back that three villagers had set off less than an hour after our departure; two women and a man. They did not appear to be tracking our unit, but instead headed off toward Chicago. I sent the scout to infiltrate the group, on a hunch they would led him to Miles Matheson. My instructions were that he inform the local garrison as soon as he clapped eyes on the fugitive. We have since reconnected with the scout and he reported that Matheson cut the soldiers to ribbons and he was the only survivor." Yes, that sounded like Miles. Clearly the years in hiding hadn't dulled his fighting edge.

"How was your spy not recognized by the villagers?" Monroe elected to focus on the details of the operation, rather than dwell on how Miles could change so much that killing scores of his own men meant nothing to him.

"Civilians tend to focus on our guns and uniforms, not out faces and I deliberately choose, Lieutenant Neville, the youngest member of my platoon."

"I seem to remember reading several positive reports regarding the corporal. His training officers all felt he has great potential." Monroe had initially been reluctant to assign soldiers to regiments where a relative was their commanding officer, but by all accounts Neville was harsher on his flesh and blood than he was on any other soldier under his command.

"Every father is proud to hear praise of his son." Monroe sensed there was more the Captain wished to add.

"But?"

"He may have been promoted prematurely. Despite my best efforts, he lacks the necessary degree of discipline."

"Elaborate."

"The group that I mentioned earlier successfully recruited Miles Matheson and caught up with our unit at the train depot. Lieutenant Neville, who had been their prisoner for multiple days, escaped and rejoined us.

Miles and one of the villagers boarded the moving and tried to free the prisoner. The lieutenant was instrumental in thwarting their attempt, but directly following the fight he disobeyed one of my orders." Defiance of a superior officer carried harsh penalties in the Militia. There had to be a highly compelling reason for a promising young soldier like Lieutenant Neville to ignore a command.

"What was the order?" What would make a man go against his father, his training, and his own self-interest?

"Lieutenant Neville had restrained the prisoner's sister. I told him to bring her to me. Instead he threw her from the train." Suddenly the pieces fell into place. Charlie Matheson. Of course she was involved. How old would she be now? Twenty? No longer a child, but young woman.

"Was she injured?" The question escaped Monroe's lips before he'd consciously made the decision to ask it.

"No, I don't believe so, which I imagine was the point." Monroe was vaguely aware of the underlying testiness in the Captain's tone, but understood it was directed at his son, not his general. The general may have been tempted to see it adjusted regardless, but he was too distracted to make the effort.

The insignificant band pursuing Danny Matheson was no longer so insignificant, not if it contained Miles and Charlie Matheson. He needed to make a plan to deal with this new wrinkle. First however, he needed to get rid of Captain Neville.

"Regarding your failure to retrieve Ben Matheson, I am inclined to be lenient. Your prisoner has already provided me with useful intelligence, and I appreciate the loyalty you've shown me at the expense of your son. You will await further instruction regarding Miles Matheson. Send in Lieutenant Neville. I'd like to personally debrief him before assigning appropriate disciplinary action. Dismissed."


	5. Enough

Bass thumped on the egg-shelled door for the 4th?...5th? time in as many minutes. He hoped he had the right apartment. The slightly inebriated man squinted at the gold number on the door. 3B. Bass was ninety percent certain that was right. He allowed for a ten percent margin for error given how much liquor was clouding his brain. Suddenly he heard something move on the other side of the door. He waited, but the door didn't open.

"Rachel, let me in." His slightly slurred speech was answered by silence. Maybe he did have the wrong apartment. There was only one way to be certain.

"Fine, you won't let me in, I'll call Ben. I'm sure he has a key." Bass dug his cell phone from his pocket and began punching numbers. The door swung open to reveal Rachel standing in stripped pajama bottom and a light blue tee-shirt. Her hair was slightly mussed, and her lips were pressed together in a hard thin line. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

"What do you want Bass?" He had never heard her voice so cold before and for a moment it threw him. It probably shouldn't have surprised Bass after being frozen out completely for nine months. Still, it hurt, how easily Rachel could flip a switch and block him out completely. He was almost envious. What he won't give for the ability to turn his feelings off like that…

"That's something I'd rather not discuss out here in the hallway." Rachel glared at him a moment longer before grudgingly stepping aside and waving him in.

"You have two minutes, and then I'm calling you a cab to take you back to your hotel." The anger in her voice prompted a similar undertone in Bass's.

"Two minutes. That's generous, considering I haven't heard from you in nine months." He may have woken her up in the middle of the night, but she'd been depriving him of sleep for much longer.

"I've been busy." He didn't doubt that. Flower arrangements, DJs, dress measurements, all the meaningless trivial shit that came with preparing to tie the knot. Still if he could make time to between fighting enemy combatants, she could make time between choosing bouquets.

"Bullshit. I've been deployed and I still found time to call you." Rachel broke their staring contest first. Arms still crossed, she wandered away from him, over to the window.

"How was the party?" She didn't look at as she spoke, but instead down at the street below. Bass wondered if she realized she was posed almost exactly as she had been on the most important day of Bass' life.

"Fine. Loud music, lots of booze, lots of women," He put special emphasis on the word _women_, hoping to generate some kind of a response, hoping that she might betray some sign that that she felt even the slightest twinge of what he felt when he saw Ben kiss her. Had her fingers tightened on her forearms or was it just his imagination?

"Sounds like you were in your element. I'm surprised you left early. What did you tell Ben and Miles?" Bass snorted, picturing the scene he had left behind when he'd had the brilliant impulse to confront Rachel at 1:30 in the morning on the night of her fiancé's bachelor party.

"I doubt Ben noticed I'm gone. When I last saw him he was trying to convince the strippers Miles hired to go back to school and earn their high school diplomas." Ben was so earnest, so honorably, so god-damned decent. God how Bass wished Ben wasn't so decent. It would make everything so much simpler.

"I told Miles I was headed to back to some woman's place. I told him I'd see him and Ben in the morning."

"Ben's not coming home tonight?" If he didn't know any better, Bass would swear Rachel sounded almost…afraid, which was ridiculous, because Rachel wasn't afraid of anything. She wasn't the type to get nervous because her boyfriend wasn't sleeping next to her. If burglars ever broke into Rachel and Ben's apartment, Bass's money would be on Rachel bashing their skulls with a baseball bat.

"He didn't want to wake you up while he was pouring himself into bed. He said you had a big day tomorrow, final bridesmaid fittings, etc." Imagining Rachel performing these tasks raised bile in Bass's throat.

"I'm also working on my vows." A punch to the gut would have been more subtle and less painful. He should walk away. That's what she was telling him now, what she'd been telling him with her silence for nine long months. He should withdraw before it was too late. The only problem was that Bass had never been the withdrawing sort. No, he was the charge ahead sort, the living embodiment of 'leap before you look'.

"Mawwidge. Mawidge has bouwht us together Towooday." Rachel spun to face him, her arms no longer crossed, but ramrod straight down at her side. Clearly the _Princess Bride_ reference did not have the intended effect.

"It's just a big joke to you isn't; my marrying Ben?" Bass was temporarily stunned. A joke? That the only woman he'd ever loved was marrying someone else?

"Yes, it is, just not a particularly funny one." In this instance the laugh was all on him. What sort of crime had he committed that the universe had seen this as a fitting punishment? Why did it have to be Rachel? Why of all the women in all the world, did he have this blind, unyielding, magnetism to the one woman he could not have?

Bass slowly moved to stand before her. She stiffened, but did not budge an inch. He didn't reach out to touch her, although he desperately wanted to. He simply gazed into her eyes, willing her to looking into them the way she had before, to see all the things he just didn't know how to say.

"You need to leave." It was no use. If eyes were the windows to the soul, then hers had been boarded up against him.

"Of course. You'll need your sleep if you're going to compose those vows, those deep and meaningful promises of eternal love. Hey, I know, I'll help. How about 'I love you so much I want to move to the suburbs with you, buy a minivan and pop out 2.5 drool machines.'" Bass knew his anger was getting the better of him, but at the moment he didn't care.

"I won't be sneered at by someone who can measure the length of his relationships by the number of drinks he buys a woman before she sleeps with him." Rachel had taken a half step forward, closing the space to a mere six inches. Rachel breathed heavily through her nose, her blue eyes crackling with heat. After a few moments the anger seemed to dim, and Rachel features softened ever so slightly. Discomfort was left in the wake of the righteous fury as she seemed to realize just how close she's let herself.

"At least I am honest, both with myself and with the women I get involved with." Rachel chin jerked up in response to the implied accusation.

"I don't lie to Ben."

"No, but you don't tell him the whole truth either. You haven't told him about me." There, he'd said it, acknowledged the elephant in the room, and now there really was no going back.

"Because there is nothing to tell." Rachel's eyes fixed on his chin as she spoke. The conviction of her words was undercut by the slight wobble in her voice.

Bass reached out slowly with his right hand and placed his fingertips just under her chin. Rachel inhaled sharply, but didn't recoil from his touch. Ever so gently he lifted his fingers and by so doing tilted her face up, so her eyes would again be looking into his.

"If that were true, you would have called me back. You wouldn't have broken your promise." She'd promised him friendship, but couldn't deliver, because they would always be more than friends. The truth was in the simple sensation of her skin beneath his. The feeling of his fingertip barely grazing her face was having more of an effect on his heart rate than a kiss of any other woman. If Rachel's shallow breathing was any indication, he wasn't alone in this feeling.

"Don't do this." Despite her words, Rachel didn't pull away as he traced her jaw with his fingers.

"Do you think I want to do this? Do you think I want to be here? " Couldn't she understand that he wasn't in control here? That he no more had the power to stop touching her than she did to pull away?

"Then what do you want?" She spoke in barely more than a whisper, but with a desperate intensity that matched his own. His hand traveled down to her throat.

"I want you. It's selfish and crazy and stupid, but I want you. I've always wanted you. I will always want you." Tears welled in Rachel's eyes, even as her pulse leapt under his fingers.

"Ben's a good man." Bass could not argue the point.

"I know." He extended his left hand to gently brush Rachel's hair away from her neck.

"He loves me." Of this he was also painfully aware.

"I know." Bass brought his other hand to rest on the other side of her neck.

"I love him." Both sets of fingers traveled upward until they cupped her face.

"I know." Slowly he lowered his face to hers, never breaking eye contact. He stopped with his lips hovering mere inches above hers. Much as he wished it were otherwise, this last move had to be hers.

"I love you more." The words had been spoken. They were laced with equal parts joy and despair, but they had been said and Bass could feel their truth in the marrow of his bones. It was enough.

"I know." Rachel's lips meets his and he thought no more.


	6. Pillow Talk

_**Okay folks, we're now headed for AU territory, mainly because I DESPISE what the writers have done to my Bass. I wouldn't be surprised if when they return in the New Year they'll have him sporting a hitler mustasche, smoking and black cigar, and stroking a hairless cat. Any who just thought I'd give you a heads up. Enjoy!**_

Monroe sat at the foot of the bed, watching the immobile figure with her back facing him. The room was dark, almost pitch back. There was no light steaming in from the windows tonight. The moon was hidden behind clouds and the general was grateful. Sitting here in the dark, with the objects in the room hidden from sight, he could almost imagine this was a different room, in a different time. Perhaps if he climbed into the bed and closed his eyes, he'd wake up in Chicago, twenty-one years ago. Maybe all that had happened was just a terrible dream. What if he had the chance to do things differently this time? No. Monroe shook his head. It was useless to imagine alternate realities when he was trapped in this one.

"I know you're awake, Rachel. There's no point in pretending." He'd only sleep next to her once, but he could still remember the soft sound of her breathing, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest.

"What do you want, Bass?" How many times would she ask him that question? Why did she do it? It wasn't as though his answer ever changed.

"I told you before; I want I've always wanted." Over twenty years had passed and he could still taste her kiss. He could feel her hands on his chest, and his hands running down her back. How could a memory be this strong? How could an act he'd performed countless times have felt so different that it seemed to be stored in a totally separate part of his brain?

"I already told you everything I know about the power." Did Rachel truly believe the power was his only desire or was she just trying to punish him?

"That's not what I meant." What would she do if he reached out and rested his hand on her side?

Rachel finally deigned to roll over and shoot him an incredulous glare. It was all the answer he needed. She would do the same thing she did anytime he came near her. Her muscles would clench and she'd reach for the nearest pointed object to bury in his neck.

"After what you've done you can't expect-"

"You asked me what I wanted, not what I expected."

There were times, like that morning two days ago, when it seemed like she remembered just as much as he did. She had called him Bass the way she used to, touched his hand, and leaned in close. Her breathing had quickened and her eyes were on his lips, and for a moment he was that twenty-three year-old man again, about to kiss the woman he loved for the first time. The only thing that had given him the strength to resist was the knowledge that Rachel knew exactly what she was doing to him. The anger he felt that she would use that memory as a weapon against him gave him the power to push her away.

"I thought you should know, your daughter is on her way here." He tried to picture Charlie Matheson, marching toward Philadelphia with Miles at her side. Miles he could easily imagine, face grim, eyes hard, yet haunted. As for Charlie, he didn't know her well enough to be certain. He'd asked Lieutenant Neville for a description and been given the basics, slim, long, light brown hair, and blue eyes. Pretty. It fit with what he remembered that last time he'd seen her, thirteen years ago. At the time he'd marveled at the striking resemblance between mother and daughter. He imagined it had only gotten more so over time.

"You sent your men after her? God, just when I thought you reached the limit on how low you'd sink-"

"I didn't send anyone after her, Rachel. She's coming after her brother." Strong, stubborn, and loyal, those were the words Neville had chosen to describe Charlie Matheson. Traits that almost as admirable as they were dangerous.

"Alone?"

"No, Miles is with her and two others." What had Miles been thinking, agreeing to help the girl on what he had to know was a suicide mission? Why hadn't he sent her back home with her friends, where she would be safe?

"How do you know this?"

"Her group caught up with the men transporting your son. They nearly succeeded in escaping with him from what I hear. I'm sure that makes you proud." A small part of Monroe was impressed that Miles and three civilians had nearly outfoxed him. The larger, saner part of him condemned it as treasonous behavior.

"It makes me scared to death. Charlie's barely more than a child and she's never left that village; she has no idea the kind of dangers-"

"Miles will protect her. I'm more worried about what happens when they finally get here." The threats of the outside world were no match for Miles Matheson. If he'd chosen to act as Charlie's guardian angel, she was as safe as anyone could be in this god-forsaken world. The real dangers she'd face would come when she was at his gates.

"What's the matter, you're afraid a thousand soldiers can't protect you from a twenty-year-old girl?" As if any of this was about him.

"I'm sending a unit to intercept her." For her own good Charlie had to be stopped. What crimes she may or may not have committed against the Republic to reach this point could be covered up. If she violated the law while in the Capital, not even he could save her.

"You mean capture her." Monroe could not afford to be seen giving preferential treatment to traitors, but a civilian prisoner was something else entirely.

"I mean catch her before she does something that can't be undone. Once my men have her in custody they can safety transport her back Philadelphia and she will be re-united with you and her brother." In a way Charlie would be getting exactly what she wanted. She'd be with her family again: Danny with the unexpected bonus of her mother. He could keep her more comfortable and safe than she'd ever been since before the Blackout.

"Right, because your men are so good at bringing prisoners in unharmed." Monroe couldn't deny that there were risks involved with his decision, but they were nowhere near as great as the ones posed if she reached Philadelphia on her own.

"There won't be another incident. I've taken precautions." Monroe was doing the best he could in an impossible situation. That seemed to be his lot in life.

"That's what you're calling what happened to Ben? An incident?" He said nothing, simply because there was nothing he could say. Monroe had acted in the best interest of the Republic when he'd given the order to capture Ben Matheson. He wouldn't apologize for that. The fact remained however that Ben was gone and he was to blame.

"So tell me, Bass, what are these precautions you've taken to ensure my daughter's safety?"

"Two things. The first is that I made it absolutely clear that if any harm comes to her, the person responsible would find their head on a pike." Monroe had found in this post-modern world that a little barbarianism went a long way.

"And the second?" Rachel sounded neither shocked nor impressed with his first tactic.

"The second is the soldier I've placed in charge of the mission, Lieutenant Neville."

"Tom Neville's son? Thank you Bass, that's really eased my mind."

Rachel and Tom Neville had never been on the best of terms. Unsurprising really, given Tom had been one of Rachel's first interrogators. Neville's skill was purely psychical, which was why he had been chosen. Miles had insisted they needed the information in Rachel's head, but Bass hadn't been prepared at that point to use physical coercion. Neville seemed like a fair compromise.

After a few week of talking to Neville, there seemed to be no change, and Bass informed Neville that this would be his last day with the prisoner. That night Rachel broke a glass frame in her room and used a shard to slit her wrists. It was a miracle Bass found her in time. He could remember cradling her body on the floor, putting as much pressure as he could on her self-inflicted wounds, her blood seeping through, and wetting his hands. In that moment he'd swore to do whatever he had to protect her from Miles.

After the doctor had stitched her up, Monroe had sent him away, and made plans to secretly move his to another holding facility. He'd handpicked soldiers, who were less than fond of Miles, to carry out his orders. The next morning he'd shown Miles a freshly dug grave and told him to inform his brother he'd been widowed. It was the angriest Monroe had ever remembered being with his best friend, up until the moment Miles had tried to kill him.

Monroe had later asked Tom what he'd said to Rachel on that final day. Tom had replied that he'd told her the Militia had captured her children and were preparing to torture them until she revealed what she'd known. Tom Neville was a smart man. He'd figured out Rachel's pressure point, just as he'd been asked. He'd just had the misfortune that Monroe hadn't been strong enough to push.

"It should. Lieutenant Neville spent several days in your daughter's company. He's quite taken with her." A woman could have no protection better than protection of a man in love with her. Love made men ignore self-interest, duty, and honor in order to guard the object of their love. Monroe knew that better than anyone.

"That's just what every mother wants to hear, that a vicious murderer is 'taken' with her daughter." 'Vicious murderer' was a fairly harsh term. Very few people in this brave new world survive passed twenty without taking a life.

"The 'vicious murderer' defied his father's commands in order to protect her." Captain Neville had clearly expected his son receive some kind of physical disciplinary action, but Monroe had opted instead to sentence him to a month in lockup, following his successful apprehension of Miles and Charlie Matheson.

"I'm surprised you let him live. Why did you?" Perhaps he was more lenient than was his custom because he'd emphasized with the Lieutenant's dilemma. Balancing personal and patriotic loyalties was not easy, but by his own father's report, the boy had done his best. Or perhaps it had nothing to do with empathy, and everything to do with who the young soldier had chosen to protect.

"Same reason I helped Miles build all this. Same I'm still here, fighting to protect it, long after he's gone. I made a promise, Rachel. Unlike you and Miles, I keep my promises." That small hand clutched in his, those intense blue eyes.

"You're not seriously trying to use that as your justification? Not after me, and Ben and Danny." Much as Monroe hated to admit it, Rachel had a point. His path had gotten so muddied that at times even he doubted he'd ever reach his intended destination. Still, he had to hold the course, because if he didn't, who would.

"Safer worlds don't come cheaply. Sacrifices sometimes have to be made."

"Isn't it convenient that these sacrifices have to be made by other people?" Rachel's words were both bitter and bitterly unfair.

"You don't think I've sacrificed? I've given EVERYTHING to build this nation. EVERYTHING." Did she think he liked the life he was living? That he relished being universally despised by everyone outside the militia? Did she think that all the ice cubes and wine could compensate for the fact that his best friend and the woman he loved hated him so much that they'd actually tried to kill him?

"If you're looking for my sympathy you won't get it. You had a choice. You always had a choice." Did he really? Monroe's life seemed to have been entirely composed of impossible decisions, and no matter what he did, he seemed to be wrong.

"So did you! If you had told me about the power from the beginning none of this would have happened! If you had just been loyal to me, we wouldn't be here right now. The fighting would have ended years ago. Ben would be alive. You and Danny wouldn't be my prisoners. I'd still have Miles. Charlie would be safe!" Charlie. It was the first time he'd said her name aloud in thirteen years. Rachel looked away from him.

"I guess we all have to learn to live with our choices." True enough. It was time to return to his quarters. AS Monroe stood to leave Rachel reached out and held his wrist. The shock of her initiating contact stopped him dead in his tracks, "If you do manage to capture them…will you tell her?" Monroe stared at her hand, trying to formulate an answer. He'd always imagined that one day he'd see Charlie again. He'd held out the hope that one day he could know her as the 'honorary Uncle Bass' Ben had called him at her baptism. That hope had died when Ben had died. In Charlie's eyes he would never be anything but her mother's captor, her brother's abductor, and her father's killer.

"What would be the point?"


	7. It Is What It Is

Bass couldn't bring himself to open his eyelids. He'd been laying there for at least five minutes, studying the inside of the pink curtains that obstructed his sight. At the moment he much preferred to focus on his other senses. Touch was telling him there was a warm, soft body secured his arms. Smell informed him she used lavender shampoo. Hearing gifted him with the knowledge that she was still peacefully slumbering in his arms.

Bass had never felt more happy or whole in his entire life. He'd also never felt more afraid. Bliss like this did not come for free. He would have to pay in one way or another, he just didn't know how much. Bass' arms tightened instinctively, pulling Rachel a few centimeters closer to his chest. This turned out to be a mistake.

Bass heard Rachel's breathing become quicker and more irregular. She was awake. He struggled to keep his own breathing slow and even, wanting to preserve the illusion for just a few moments more. The charade may have been childish, but it was all that stood between him and the words that would shatter this fragile and perfect moment. The seconds of unbroken silence ticked on, as Bass prayed for one more, just one more, again, and again, and again. A minute passed then two, then five. Were her eyes open yet, or had she too chosen to hide from the reality bearing down upon them both? No, Rachel didn't hide from anything. Suddenly he felt the lightest of touches along his hairline as Rachel brushed a stray piece of hair from his forehead.

"Open your eyes, Bass. There's no point in pretending." He gradually lifted his lids, allowing the light of morning to filter in. There was Rachel's face, her half smile at odds with the pained eyes that looked into his.

"I'm not sorry," Bass blurted out. He felt the need to express the words before reason took hold, "I know this is the part where we're supposed to say what a mistake it was, but I'm not sorry, and I'm not going say I am."

"It wasn't a mistake," Rachel agreed, "A mistake is an unintentional error, like locking your keys in the car or forgetting to turn the lights off when you leave your apartment. Last night wasn't a mistake; it was a choice, yours and mine. Now its morning, and we have to face the consequences." Consequences. The word had a distinctly ominous ring to it.

"I've got a strong feeling I'm not going to like where this is going." They way Rachel was staring at him was creating a fierce gnawing sensation in Bass' stomach. Something about the way her eyes were scrutinizing every last detail of his face was scaring the hell out of him.

"I don't like it either, Bass, but it is what it is." That was when it hit him. He knew where he'd seen stares like Rachel's before. It was on the faces of his fellow Marines, right before they shipped out. He'd watched them saying good bye to their families, looking at their faces, trying to commit every last detail to memory, because they knew they might not see them ever again. Rachel had already made her decision, and it hadn't been in his favor.

"Right. It is what it is. Fine." Bass threw the covers off and snatched his jeans off the beige carpet. He brusquely yanked them on.

"What are you doing?" He couldn't even look at her. Rage and sorrow blurred his vision as he searched the floor for his shirt. There it was, by the foot of the bed. As he pulled it on he was struck by the memory of how it had ended up there. Two sets of hands frantically trying to undo all six buttons. It was a miracle Bass hadn't ripped the damn thing in two. He fumbled to push the plastic circles into their corresponding holes.

"Clearing out. Miles and Saint Ben will be waiting for me back at the hotel." His heart might be broken, but if Bass could just stay focused on the task at hand, he might actually make it out of the apartment with a little of his pride intact. Where the hell was his belt?

"Sit down! We need to talk about this!" No, 'we' didn't need to talk about anything. Rachel had already unilaterally decided how this conversation was going to go. She had probably been orchestrating the whole God-damned thing from the minute she woke up in his arm. Hell, for all he knew, she'd been planning it last night as she'd lead him into her bedroom, as she'd shed her night clothes, as he'd picked her up and laid her on the mattress…

"What's there to say? We banged, you don't want me blabbing to your hubby-to-be, I get it. I'm not really interested in hearing you let me down gently-" His back had been to the bed as he threaded black leather through the loops of his pants, and as a result he heard, rather than saw her feet hit the floor. He turned and barely had time to register a blurred palm flying towards his face before his face exploded in pain. Bass had been slapped by women before, but Rachel's blow held quite a bit more sting. He rubbed his cheek, trying to see through the collection of newly formed spots. When his vision cleared he saw Rachel standing before him, arms rigid at her sides, fists balled, and a tear running down her cheek. Rachel, who'd once confessed she hadn't been able to shed a tear in fifteen years, was crying over him, for the second time in less than twelve hours. His own anger and sadness and pain suddenly felt trivial. He had hurt her.

"Rachel, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Bass put his arms around her. Rachel pounded the side of her fist against his chest.

"You're a son of a bitch." Bass couldn't argue the point.

"I know." Rachel's arms enfolded him then, returning his embrace. They stood there for a few seconds, not saying a word. Eventually Bass has to step back, his body's natural responses to Rachel being what they were, and having no better since of timing or tact than the rest of Bass.

"I am in love you. I realize I didn't say it last night, and I'm pretty lousy at showing it, but I am." He smiled weakly as he gave a pathetic shrug of his shoulders. This always looked so much easier in movies. Rachel returned his sad grin with one of her own.

"And I am in love with you. I know that with absolute certainty. What I don't know, is if it's going to be enough." Despite himself Bass felt a surge of hope. If she didn't know, that meant she hadn't decided after all. It meant he still had a fighting chance. He still had time to make his case.

"I know I'm not like Ben. I'm not responsible and pretty new at the commitment thing, but-" To his surprise, Rachel cut him off.

"You don't understand Bass. I wasn't saying I didn't know if it would be enough for ME. What I don't know is if it would be enough for YOU."

"I don't understand." Rachel, brilliant, funny, strong, beautiful Rachel, loved him, loved him. How could that ever not be enough?

"I'm engaged. My parents have spent the last nine months investing thousands of dollars planning my wedding. The invitations have gone out to my friends and family. This all has happened because nine months ago on Christmas morning I promised a good, faithful man that I would marry him. I'm willing to ignore all that. I am willing to bear the expense and the humiliation, and the guilt for you. I will break Ben's heart for you. I will do it because I love you and I would do anything to be with you. But this isn't just about me, Bass, it's also about you. Do know what the first thing that Ben ever told me about you was?" Bass felt so overwhelmed by Rachel's declaration, that he almost missed the question.

"That I was completely full of shit?"

"No, that was the second thing. The first thing he said about you was that he and Miles were brothers, but you and Miles were twins." Bass had never thought much about how Ben viewed his relationship with Miles. Miles was his family, his only family, so naturally Bass had latched on tight.

"He said that?" Bass never thought about how their friendship might have affected the relationship between the blood brothers. Would Ben and Miles have been closer if not for Bass? Had Bass stolen Ben's brother from him, just like he was now hoping to steal Rachel?

"Yes. He wasn't angry, or bitter about it, he just said it off hand, like it was just a fact, a law of nature. I can burn my bridges with Ben and Miles. It would be painful, but I could do it. Can you?" Suddenly it became clear what Rachel had meant when she said it might not be enough for HIM. The stakes were high for Rachel, but they were higher for him. She'd be losing a man she loved enough to agree to marry, but she'd gain him, a man she professed to love more. Bass would be endangering his relationship with two loved one, one of whom was the cornerstone of his life. He literally could not imagine living in a world where Miles hated him.

"Miles wouldn't…" The words seemed to stick in Bass' throat. He coughed and then tried again, "Miles wouldn't leave me." He tried to deliver the words with confidence, but his execution was somewhat lacking. Miles and Bass had been so close for so long, they did everything together, including joining the Marines. If it came down to it, Miles would have to pick him…wouldn't he?

"You could be right. But this would hurt him, it would hurt both of them, badly. Are you really ready to do that?" Rachel was right. Even if Bass got 'custody' of Miles in the inevitable dissolution his and Ben's friendship, he would still be responsible for the destruction of the Matheson clan. Miles and Rachel were Ben's only family. Could he really live with himself if he stole everything Ben loved away from him? Could he stand to be the cause of his best friend's pain? Could he stomach the guilt over dividing the sons of Marie Matheson, who'd shown Bass such love and generosity. It was impossible, yet so was the thought of losing Rachel. Bass sunk onto the edge of the bed, as if gravity had suddenly become too much for him. Rachel sat down beside him

"I love you," He spoke the words staring straight ahead, addressing both Rachel, and the universe. A small desperate part of him held out hope that by speaking this sacred phrase, he would be provided with an answer to his inescapable dilemma. Predictably, no miracle came. It was strange that those words had such power, and yet no power all.

"I know, but Miles is your family. They're both your family." On a whim Bass rolled back the sleeve of his shirt and examined his naked foreman. As boys he and Miles had used markers to create matching emblems, featuring the letter 'M'. 'M' for Matheson and Monroe, brothers forever.

"It's not fair." The ink had long since faded, but had Bass' commitment to his promise?

"No, it's not, not to you, or me, or Ben, or Miles. But it is what it is." He'd misjudged Rachel when she had first uttered that phrase this morning. He'd thought she was rejecting him. He'd thought she was trivializing his pain with a recycled platitude. He'd been wrong, Rachel had just been being Rachel: the woman who saw what was coming miles down the road, the woman who understood him better than anyone, except perhaps Miles.

"It is what it is." It may have been a cliché, but it was the truth. Rachel leaned her head on his shoulder. Bass kissed her forehead, painfully aware it was for the last time.

**Hope you enjoyed the angst, I was rocking out to John Meyer's **_**Heartbreak Warfare**_** and Lifehouse's **_** It Is What It Is**_** while writing this chapter. Don't forget to review!**


	8. One Out Of Three

Monroe unrolled the forth scroll of parchment he'd received regarding the ongoing search for the pendants. This one had been courtesy of Captain Shaw, who was currently scouring the south most tip of the Republic for the priceless necklace. Monroe scanned the few lines, and then crumpling the note in disgust. Nothing. Fourteen days and still nothing. One more name on Rachel's list with a question mark next to it. He wasn't terribly surprised.

The guardians this momentous secret had evidently taken precautions to protect themselves. They were proving so elusive that Monroe suspected if it hadn't been for that one phone call, the group would never have been uncovered. How different things might have been for the Mathesons, if Ben hadn't reached out to his brother in those final seconds before the Blackout. That futile warning had ultimately cost his family so much. Monroe wondered if that was what Ben had thought of, in his final moments, the way he'd failed the people he loved.A knock on the door interrupted the general's thoughts.

"Enter," Monroe called, hoping he was not about to receive more bad news. Captain Neville strode through the door. He stopped a few feet in front of Monroe's desk, feet planted, back straight, and hands clasped behind his back.

"Report."

"Sir, Lieutenant Neville's unit has returned." For a moment Monroe forgot to breathe. When he'd first sent the young soldier to capture Charlie and Miles, he'd never dreamed they'd been in possession of Ben's amulet. Ben had made it abundantly clear that he'd rather his children grow-up motherless, than turn the necklace over to the Militia. Why would he give it to Charlie, who was marching into their Capital in search of her brother? What father would endanger his daughter like that, giving her an object that would make her the ultimate target, equal sought after by Militia, Rebels, and the leaders of any bordering nation? Monroe had assumed that if Ben hadn't disposed of the pendant, he would have hidden it somewhere in his village. The General had sent a small troop of soldiers to Ben Matheson's village to locate the power source.

Five days ago a rumor reached his ears that had been spreading like wildfire among his soldiers. There had been a mass escape on one of the General's conscription ships. That would have been news enough, but the real subject of gossip had been" the miracle." One of the recruits had been attempting an escape with the help of a woman and a man. The Militia soldiers had had the upper hand, when a light appeared in the darkness, artificial light. The powerful beam originated from a nearby lighthouse. The rebels' took advantage of the ensuring shock and turned the table in their favor. The descriptions provided by witnesses confirmed the victors were none other than Miles, Nora Clayton, and Charlie Matheson. Monroe had immediately sent a message to the troop in route to Ben Matheson's village voiding their original orders and commanding them to join Neville's unit.

"Why isn't Lieutenant Neville reporting to me directly?" The fact that the soldier he'd placed in charge of this crucial mission wasn't standing in front of him boded ill.

"He was injured, Sir. He'd currently unconscious in the hospital. I debriefed his second in command."

"Was the mission a success?"

"They apprehended Charlie Matheson unharmed. Miles Matheson eluded capture." Captain Neville failed to mention the pendant, so Monroe assumed it too remained in the wind.

"How many times is Miles going to slip through our fingers. He's only one man." Monroe's soldiers out-numbered the Matheson party five to one. He'd wanted Miles, Charlie, and the Pendant. What had he received? One out of three.

"With respect Sir, he isn't just one man. He's Miles Matheson." Captain Neville said Miles' name as if he some kind of legendary folk hero, like Zorro. Maybe one day, a hundred years from now, Miles would be. No. If they were still telling Miles' story one hundred years from now, it would be a tale of betrayal and treason. Miles Matheson would be more infamous than Benedict Arnold. History was written by the victors after all, and Monroe had no intention of losing.

"I don't want excuses, I want results. Find him."

"Yes, Sir."

"Where's the girl now?" Instead of dwelling on what he didn't yet have, the General would focus on what he did.

"She's in the holding cells." That was good. Originally Monroe had planned much more comfortable accommodations, but circumstances had changed. Charlie had been thrust in the middle of the most important scavenger hunt in the history of the world.

"I'm assuming you searched her."

"Yes, Sir. No sign of the pendant." As he'd suspected, but it would have been remiss of him not to ask.

"That doesn't mean she doesn't know where it is." He'd said the words aloud, though he'd been speaking more to himself than Neville.

"Strausser could make her talk." The General's cool intellect told him that Neville offered a perfectly valid option. Monroe's gut instincts, however, told him to reach across the desk and crush the captain's throat for his suggestion. The thought of Charlie Matheson being in the same room as that his pet sociopath, made Monroe's blood boil in a way he'd never experienced before. The sensation actually frightened him, not the instinct to commit violence, but the loss of emotional control. Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring Charlie here. Unfortunately it was too late to do anything about it now.

"Really? Was Strausser able to make Rachel talk?" Hopefully that was reason enough to put an end to this particular train of thought.

"I doubt Charlie Matheson has her mother's…endurance." After years of cajoling and threatening, and even pleading, the General had finally unleashed his monster on the woman he loved…no, the woman he ONCE loved. Though Rachel would never have believed, it had been an act of mercy. He'd known her son would soon be in his grasp and that once Danny was, the General would have no choice but to use the boy in any way he had to for the good of the Republic. If Rachel had just surrendered to the pain, she could have told herself that she'd had no choice, that there was only so much the human body could endure. She'd have been absolved of the guilt she now felt, having chosen her son over her principles. Monroe never would have needed to threaten Rachel's son, and Charlie's sister. Rachel's strength, her so-called, endurance, had cost him a few more slivers of his soul. No good without sacrifice, he had told himself. The mantra had served him well then, and would likely continue to do so for many years to come.

"I won't be so sure." Everything Lieutenant Neville had said about Charlie suggested she was every inch her mother's daughter.

"Charlie Matheson has lived the past fifteen years of her life in a sheltered little hamlet. She's bound to be soft." This from a man who'd been a paper-pusher in his life before the blackout? Neville should have known better than most about the effect of baptism by fire. The Blackout had been his gauntlet. Charlie's journey to Philadelphia had been hers.

"She's spent the last two months crossing half the Republic in pursuit of armed men who killed her father and arrested her brother. She nearly succeeded in rescuing him from a unit of trained soldiers. You think a "soft" girl could have done that?" Neville struggled, half-heartedly conceding the point.

"Why not just use Danny Matheson?" Monroe considered the suggestion. Charlie's quest to find her brother was at best exceedingly perilous and at worst completely suicidal. The girl must have a profound love for her brother. That being the case, a gun to Danny Matheson's head should properly motivate her to reveal everything she knew about the pendant's location. Was that a step he was willing to take?

"We need Danny Matheson unharmed to ensure Rachel's cooperation." There had to be another option available.

"Actually we don't. We have two hostages now instead of one. We have a spare." A spare, like the Matheson children were car tires. As though if one of them was punctured, it would be unfortunate, but hardly worth getting upset over. When had Tom gotten so numb? When had he?

"Do you have any idea what Rachel Matheson would do if we kill one of her children?" Rachel had tried to kill herself because of the mere suggestion they'd been harmed. God only knew what she'd do if her worst fear came to pass.

"No."

"I don't know either. Rationally she would do what she could to protect her remaining offspring, but mothers aren't known to be terribly rational after they lose a child. Let's not forget, she is the only prisoner we have that can build the amplifier." For once he was glad his men had failed to bring him the other scientists. It meant he didn't need to justify Rachel's value to himself or anyone else. He was, however, still left with the problem of Charlie. He needed a palatable method to obtain what he needed for the Republic.

"We'll use a spy masquerading as a fellow prisoner, someone who can gain her trust. She might not be soft, but I doubt she's completely hardened."

"We have men trained for this kind of work. I could get you a list of-"

"No. It will be me." It was true that Monroe's military did have an intelligence branch, but given the importance of the information, the only person he trusted to gather it was himself. Neville opened his mouth closed it, and then hesitantly opened it again.

"Respectfully Sir, this isn't you area of expertise." On the contrary, on the subject of the Mathesons, there was no one more qualified. He may not have spent much time with the girl, but he knew Rachel, Ben, and Miles. He knew the forces that had shaped who she was. He knew things about her family she didn't even know. He would use that knowledge to serve his country.

"You're wrong, Tom. Convincing people to do what I want them to do is exactly my area of expertise. There is nothing more important to the Republic than getting those pendants and there is nothing more important to me than the Republic. I'm going."


	9. Over

Bass rolled up his sleeve and stared at the tattoo he'd gotten the night after Ben and Rachel's wedding. His fingers traced the M. Monroe and Matheson, bound always and forever. It was truer now than ever. Bass pulled the flask out of his jacket pocket and took a long swig. He ignored the burning sensation as the liquid trickled down his throat, knowing it would soon deliver him much desired numbness. He was so thirsty today. He'd been thirsty for the past eleven months. Bass was amazed he'd made it through the entire ceremony without sneaking a sip. The power of Lord had obviously been at work.

He'd sat in hard pew, tuning out the priest, and focusing on the figure of Christ hanging on the cross. At least there had been one guy present who knew what he was going through. Bass snorted at his own joke and took another swallow of liquor.

It was good to be outside. When finally blessing had been given it had taken everything he'd had not to vault over the benches and sprint to the nearest exit. He'd managed to give his 'date' the slip in the throng of departing friends and family members. Bass didn't feel particularly guilty about it, after all he'd only met her two weeks ago, and he had paid for her plane ticket. Heather's willingness to accompany to Chicago had far more to do with the chance to shop on the Magnificent Mile than it did with him. It had been a spiteful move on his part, bringing a woman he barely knew, but he had been feeling petty.

"Bass?" Bass didn't need to turn around to recognize the voice. Obviously the tree he'd been standing behind hadn't completely obscured him from view. He briefly considered slipping the flask back into his pocket, but quickly discarded the notion. HE didn't hide things from HER.

"Where's today's VIP?" He didn't turn around to look at the woman in the flowered dress as she stopped beside him. He knew her hair hung neatly down around her shoulder, carefully styled for today's 'Big Day'. He knew she was wearing cream colored kitten heels as another concession to the momentous occasion. Most of all he knew she was wearing a gold band on her left hand.

"With Ben. He's waiting in the car." Rachel paused, for once apparently unsure how to proceed. Bass was in no mood to help her. "Heather seems…nice," Rachel ventured. The corner of Bass' lips twisted upward in a mockery of a smile. She had noticed. That alone was enough to make the plane ticket worth it.

"Does she?" Rachel was obviously trying to be generous. Bass had chosen his date because she was shallow, hot, a little slutty, and blonde. Heather fit the bill for Bass' self-prescribed pain medication perfectly.

"What does she do?" Rachel seemed to be making an effort, trying to keep their conversation very civilized and polite. Bass hated it.

"Besides me? No idea. Maybe you should go ask her." He wished Rachel would take the hint and leave.

"I can't, she left. She says she meet you back at the hotel tonight. How long have you been seeing each other?" It was like listening to Rachel's voice read a script written by Miss Manners.

"Cut the crap, Rachel. We both know you didn't come over here to make small talk. Just say it." He knew she'd seen what he was holding and could smell the alcohol on his breath. Her tongue must have been bleeding from biting it so hard.

"You're drunk. You're drunk at my daughter's baptism." There it was: the slight undercurrent of anger and disappointment.

"Keenly observed." He brought the flask to his lips once more, effectively waving a red flag at the bull.

"You were drunk at the wedding too." Her emotions were sustenance to him. The angrier she got, the more alive he felt.

"Everyone drinks at weddings." Open bars do not make for sober guests. At least he'd had a damn good excuse.

"Not everyone manages single-handedly finish of an entire bottle of whiskey."

"I'm surprised you noticed. You didn't look at me once the entire night." He knew it wasn't fair, blaming Rachel for avoiding him. They both agreed that what happened the night of the bachelor party could never happen again. Still, it had killed him watching her look so happy with Ben. The fact that she could smile and laugh while his heart was breaking had made him more bitter and self-pitying than he'd believed possible.

"Bass, I am worried about you." The anger had been replaced by concern. That wasn't what he wanted. He didn't want compassion or caring. He didn't want anything that would soften the protective shell of his resentment.

"Why, because I drink at social functions? News flash Rachel: I've been doing that since I was fourteen. Ask Miles if you don't believe me." Rachel was the enemy, and he needed her to act like it.

"I have asked Miles. He's concerned too."

"You talked to Miles about me behind my back!" At last, something to fuel his outrage.

"I had to. You are not acting like yourself."

"This is myself, Rachel. I'm a womanizing drunk." This was him now. This is what she had made him with her secrets and her lies.

"That's not true." Why was she doing this to him? Why was she still pretending to be on his side? Why was she asking him to be better than he was, when she was responsible for turning him into this mess in the first place? He finally had the strength to turn and look her directly in the eyes.

"What do you know about the truth?" he articulated slowly. Something flickered across Rachel's face as his words sunk in. Her features underwent their familiar shift from flesh to stone.

"The last time I checked, you weren't exactly Honest Abe yourself." Her voice was cold enough to frost the summer leaves.

"Maybe not, but I've never lied to YOU." In all the years Monroe had been friends with Miles he could count the number of lies he'd told him on one hand. They all had to do with Rachel.

"I have never told you a single lie." She hadn't actually spoken untrue words, but she kept things to herself, important things. It was how she lied to Ben and now it was how she lied to him.

"A lie by omission is still a lie. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."

"If you have something to ask, then ask." She was giving him permission to say the words aloud? Did she think he won't take her up on it? If she did, she was sorely mistaken.

"Am I Charlotte's father?" Just hearing the question that had been rattling around inside his brain escape through his lips was a relief.

"No. Ben is Charlotte's father." Five heartbeats passed and Bass still couldn't decipher how he felt. It should feel good, one more secret he didn't have to keep from Miles, one less complication in his relationship with Rachel. There was an element of relief, but there was also regret. It was the regret that puzzled him.

"You did a paternity test?" Had she sent DNA samples to a lab under a fake name? Rachel was a scientist, and currently worked as a lab assistant at the University of Chicago, so maybe she had done the test herself.

"No, and I never will. I don't need to." Bass was completely bewildered by her answer. Bass had only gotten a C plus in Biology, but he'd definitely had grasped the basics of human reproduction.

"How can you be sure? I'm not the academic that Ben is, but I can still count backwards from nine and by my math, the dates match up." Rachel shook her head.

"You don't get it. Ben is going to raise Charlotte with me. He is going to change diapers and wake up for 3 am feedings. He's going to read her stories and tuck her in at night. He'll help her with her algebra homework, and drive her to her first dance. Ben has committed to doing these things and that makes HIM her father. It doesn't matter what her DNA says."

"So that's what you decided? I don't get a say in this?" Didn't he have rights, at least the right to know, one way or the other, if he had helped bring a new life into this world?

"You made your choice eleven months ago. Nothing has changed."

"Everything has changed. I could have a-" His voice caught on the word 'daughter.' It was such a basic word, but it carried so much weight. It was a word that would change him. He would no longer be Bass Monroe: Best friend of Miles, lover of Rachel, Marine of the United States. Before any of those titles would come: Father of Charlotte. The infant he'd never even held would have a higher claim on him than even Miles. He didn't know if he was ready for that.

"You can't even say it!" Rachel, being Rachel, had caught and seized on his hesitation. "You know what? You're right, things have changed. I'm married now. I put on a white dress, stood in front of a priest and made a vow. I'm also a mother now. I have an eight-week-old baby who deserves a good home and a good father."

"I could be a good father. We could be a family." A family of his own was something Bass had longed for as long as he could remember. He loved the Mathesons, even Ben, but deep down he wanted more.

"You want to be a family? Okay, I'll play, where we would live?" Bass blinked. He hadn't actually thought out the specifics.

"In Port Royal, I guess." He was a Marine, so he didn't really have a say in where he was stationed. He knew some of the other soldiers had families that lived close to the base.

"So I would have to leave my job behind and move to South Carolina? That's fine I guess, because I need to be home with the baby, for at least another twelve months. Unfortunately that would mean you'd have to support all three us on your marine salary. Speaking of your being a Marine, it's not the safest profession in the world is it? What are the death benefits like for the married woman the soldier is having an affair with? Not all that good, I'm guessing. It's lucky divorces are so cheap and Ben's probably wouldn't fight me too much, after all, I only cheated on him with his brother's best friend, got pregnant and let him think the baby was his." Her words stung, mostly because they were so true.

"Okay, I get-" Rachel interrupted, apparently not finished destroying his dream.

"Let's assume the divorce does go through, and we scurry off to the nearest Justice of the Peace. There will be no honeymoon, because I'll have a baby to take care of and you will have to re-deploy. Best case scenario you'll spend the first year of Charlie's life on another continent. You'll miss her first steps, and her first words. When you do make it back, you'll be stuck facing the reality of your new life, the spit-up and the diapers, and the crying at two in the morning. You'll realize it isn't quite the fantasy you thought it would be. Deep down, you'll start to hate us, your new family that cost you your old one." Rachel couldn't have leveled him more thoroughly if she'd run him over with a monster truck.

"I guess a lot has changed in eleven months. Back then you said you'd do anything to be with me." What happened to the Rachel who'd been willing to gamble on him?

"And you chose Miles, so don't you dare play the victim card here. Don't you dare try to make me feel guiltier than I already do!" Bass' anger deflated like a punctured balloon. He couldn't pretend this was all Rachel's fault. He had made choices that had brought them both here. She was right. She was always right.

"You're right. I'm sorry. Again. I always seem to do the wrong thing when it comes to you."

"I'm not trying to hurt you, Bass. You know that I still-that I'll always-" She stopped herself and smiled weakly at him. She couldn't say the words anymore, not now that she was Ben's wife.

"I know. And you're right, it's probably better this way. Not knowing is better." He'd thought that living with the question would be the worse torture of all, but worse would be knowing Charlotte was his and still having to watch her be raised by someone else.

"It was just once with us, so the odds are in Ben's favor." Bass wasn't sure who Rachel was trying to convince: him, or herself.

"Yes, the odds are in Ben's favor." They always were. Bass took a final gulp of whiskey and put the metal case back into his pocket. He tried his best to make his smile genuine. "He's lucky. You both are. She's beautiful. You're going to make a great family." Rachel and Ben were loving and responsible, they would be great parents. Unlike Bass, Charlotte would grow up secure in the knowledge she was cared for and loved. Giving up his possible claim to Charlotte was the best thing he could do for her.

"Thank you," Rachel paused and bit her bottom lip. "Ben was right, you know. Charlotte could always more uncles…" There was a part of him that was tempted. Bass may not have been 'father material', but he could definitely be a 'fun uncle'. He could be in her life, buy her presents, and make her laugh. Unfortunately he knew himself too well. It was just like with Rachel, he'd convince himself that pieces of her would be better than nothing at all. It wasn't.

"I can't Rachel. I can't keep living like this." Like a smoker with a pack a day habit, one or two cigarettes would never fully satisfy him. He needed to rid himself of his addiction. He needed to quit, cold turkey.

"Like what?"

"Like a kid at a toy store window, seeing the things he wants most right in front of him, but knowing they don't belong him." He needed to remove himself from temptation or else eventually he'd break the display window and try to steal what wasn't his.

"So what will you do?"

"Miles and I aren't literally fused at the hip. I'll just make alternate plans for the days Miles is planning to visit." Bass didn't need to spend holidays with Miles, not when he was with him every other day of the year. He could learn to share.

"You don't think Miles or Ben will object?"

"I'll just them I'd rather spend my time with babes than babies." They might fight him on it for a while, but eventually they'd give up. By the time Charlie started kindergarten, they'd probably have forgotten he was ever present at the Matheson family gatherings.

"So, I'm never going to see you again?" She sounded as adrift as he felt. He would again never see her smile, or smell her lavender shampoo, or touch her hand.

"At least not until Miles finds a girl willing to spend the rest of her life with him. So, yeah, I'd say 'never' is a good estimate." His poor attempt at humor didn't earn him even a weak chuckle.

"It's not fair." Hearing her echo his words from eleven months ago, gave him a strange sense of closure. She remembered the moment they'd had. Brief, though it was, it had been real to her too. That would have to be enough.

"'Who ever said life is fair? Where is that written?'_" The Princess Bride_, once again providing the perfect parallel to his life. "Now go on, Ben's probably wondering where you are." Rachel stiffly turned toward the church. She stared at the building, as though she could see through the brick, to the parking lot on the other side, where her husband and child were waiting for her. In one swift move she grabbed Bass' neck, pulled him towards her and kissed him with a desperation that was only matched by his own. Finally she drew away. Bass didn't try to hold her.

"Goodbye, Bass." She marched back up the lawn before he could say another word. It was just as well, because there were no more words to say. It was over.


	10. Prison Buddies

Monroe's lip was bleeding, his left eye was swelling to the size of an apricot and all he could think of was how different his head felt with close cropped hair. Being out of uniform was also an uncomfortable experience. He'd requested a dirty long shelved shirt and pants that would befit a newly captured prisoner. Monroe suspected they'd been acquired courtesy of an actual captive of the Republic. The fabric was definitely authentically pungent.

Two guards roughly dragged him through the holding cells. He threw his weigh to make it more difficult for them. For what little he knew about Charlie she'd be more likely to identify with a fellow fighter, than a victim. One of the guards instinctively punched him in the gut. Monroe didn't have for fake doubling over in pain. In the guard's defense, he had ordered them to treat him as they would any other prisoner. He didn't remember being punched in the stomach hurting this much. He was obviously going soft behind his desk.

The soldiers threw him into a cell and slammed the door. Monroe clutched his gut for a few more seconds before slowly straightening his spine. He turned in a circle slowly, trying to get his bearings. He stopped when his gaze fell on the girl sitting cross-legged in the cell to his left, staring unabashedly at him with unblinking blue eyes.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you about staring?" Lieutenant Neville had lied when he called her pretty. Charlie Matheson wasn't pretty, she was stunningly gorgeous. She had a face that in a different world would have been plastered across the covers of magazines. It wasn't her beauty that made it impossible to look away. It was the fierceness in her eyes he would recognize anywhere. If she'd been in a crowd of a hundred girls Monroe would have still have known she was Rachel's daughter.

"My mother's dead." Her words were matter of fact, not designed to evoke pity. Still Monroe automatically offered the polite response.

"Sorry." How would she react when he finally reunited her with Rachel? Would she cry? Would she smile? Would she yell?

"It was a long time ago. Do I know you?" Charlie's question forcefully pulled the general back into the task at hand. It was imperative for both of them that she did not guess his identity.

"Excuse me?" Charlie had only spent a few days with "Uncle Bass", and thirteen years had passed since then. He doubted the time had etched itself into her memory the way it had in his, yet something about him must have lingered in her mind. He was suddenly incredibly grateful he'd taken precautions with his disguise.

"Something about you looks familiar." Even if she did remember, chances were slim she would connect the man he'd been then with the man he was now. Still, Monroe knew better to rely on luck, when the universe had made it clear he had none.

"I've been told I have one of those faces. At least when it's not cover in bruises." Hopefully his injures would awaken her sympathies and distract her from her suspicions.

"Show me your wrists." Charlie's voice was hard. Clearly his wounds had left her unmoved.

"What?" Although he colored his voice with confusion he had a fairly good idea where this was going. She was looking for the brand. Smart girl. There were only a handful of Militia exempted from receiving the mark and those were the recruits specifically trained for espionage. Monroe, for obvious reasons also had bare wrists.

"It could be that you're one of the soldiers who came to steal my village's food and women. I want to be sure." The women comment caught Monroe by surprise. It was true he sent soldiers to every village to gather a tax owed to the Republic for the work they did protecting the borders from invading nations and enforcing the law, but the Republic didn't traffic in sex slaves. He'd legalized prostitution, but he'd never authorize women being forced into it. If Charlie was telling the truth and she had no reason to lie, someone in his Militia was abusing their authority and Monroe would have his head for it.

"Suspicious little thing aren't you?"

"Let's just say I'd rather not repeat the same mistake twice." She must have been referring to Lieutenant Neville. A part of him was curious about her feelings towards Captain Neville's son. The boy was clearly smitten, but was it one-sided? He had betrayed her and saved her in equal measure. Which act was more significant to Charlie? He doubted he'd ever have answers for any of his questions, but it didn't stop him from wondering.

Monroe rolled down the both sleeves just far enough for Charlie to see his flesh was unscarred.

"Satisfied?"

"Yes. Thanks." Charlie voice was slightly warmer, indicating he'd earned himself at least a little trust.

"You're welcome. Now show me yours." Monroe felt his response would be a reasonable one for the man he was pretending to be. It also afforded him the opportunity to turn the tables on Charlie. Instead of trying to persuade her to trust him, he'd trick her into convincing him to trust her.

"Ummm…actually I have one." Charlie sheepishly raised her arm to show him the damaged skin. Monroe felt odd looking at the symbol of his nation burned into her flesh. This should have been a good development, an excuse to play the skeptic, but he just kept thinking about how she had gotten the brand. An officer of his Republic, had held her down and pressed a poker against her skin, under his orders.

"That's looks pretty fresh. They throwing you into the deep end of the pool in your first week?" He tapped down on his anger. Charlie would be fine and what happened to her happened to thousands of kids just like her every single month. The mark wasn't a punishment, it was a gift, it was an opportunity to be a part of something greater.

"Look, I was on a conscription ship, but I escaped." This part he already knew. Monroe could help, but wonder if it might have been better if she hadn't left.

"Nobody escapes those ships." Charlie was strong; she would have survived her training, probably even thrived. Perhaps if she'd stayed, she'd have eventually understood what the Republic stood for, what he was trying to accomplish.

"Well, I did." Charlie's chin jerked up in defiance. The kid had a lot of spirit, he'd give her that much.

"Lucky me, they threw me in here with Houdini." Charlie's forehead wrinkled in confusion.

"Who?" There really was no generation gap like the one that existed between those who'd been old enough to remember life pre-Blackout and those that hadn't been.

"Wow, do I feel old right now. Houdini was a professional escape artist."

"A what?" To this day it amazed Monroe how much culture had been lost when the lights went out

"A professional escape artist. It's a type of entertainer. He used to lock himself up in chained trunks and then escape from them. It was his job." Monroe sometimes wondered what had happened to the people who use to be celebrities. Had any of them survived or had they all just crumbled the moment they realized all the power and the money they'd amassed now meant shit. Was Anne Hathaway still wandering around somewhere singing, "I Dreamed a Dream"?

"People paid to watch him do this?"

"Yes."

"People were strange before the Blackout." There was no longer time for all the things people invented to keep themselves from being bored. Survival was a full time occupation.

"Don't kid yourself, they still are, which brings us back to you. You claim you escaped off the conscription ships, and judging by the burns on your wrists, that wasn't more than a week ago. If they caught you again, why are you still alive? It is my understanding the Militia executes deserters on the spot." How much did Charlie no about why she'd been brought here? What had Ben told her? What had Miles told her?

"I don't know." She was lying, he could feel it.

"I don't believe you." She knew something, but the question was, what?

"I don't care what you believe. If you really think is all some kind of a trap, then don't talk to me. Honestly, I could use the peace and quiet." As Charlie paced her cell, occasionally testing the strength of her cell bars Monroe silently chastised himself. He'd made a mistake and pushed too hard. Charlie had known him for only a few minutes. She'd be an idiot to confide him. He needed to focus on building a bond. He needed her to like him. He needed her to trust him.

For once he felt at a loss. He couldn't use the usual tricks he employed on women for obvious reasons. He needed to befriend her and he didn't have much experience with that, even from his Pre-Blackout days. He'd never had women friends. The closest he'd come was Rachel. He smiled thinking back to that Christmas Eve they spent together, before everything had gotten so complicated.

He saw it all again in his mind's eye. Rachel grinning as she tickled him. Arguing about _Star Wars_ and_ The Princess Bride_. It was funny, looking back on it now how their innocent debates had foreshadowed their present predicament. That was it. That was how he could reach Charlie.

"'I always think everything could be a trap, which is why I'm still alive.'" Charlie stopped pulling at the steel and looked at him.

"What?"

"It's a quote from movie_, The Princess Bride_. It was my favorite."

"I can't believe you can remember some movie after 15 years." Monroe could barely believe it himself. He hadn't even thought of it on over a decade and yet the words were still embedded in the confines of his memory.

"_The Princess Bride_ isn't just 'some movie'. It's _The Princess Bride_. Whatever situation you find yourself in, you can always link it back to that movie." When you love something enough it becomes a part you. The world may change around you, hell, even you might become something completely different, but that piece will remain, whether you want it to or not. Monroe had learned that lesson only too well.

"Really? What about our situation right now?" Despite herself, Charlie's lips were quirked into a half-smile.

"Easy. 'Don't even think about trying to escape, the chains are far too thick. Have no dream of being rescued either.'" The smile vanished as quickly as it had come.

"Aren't you the optimist." Charlie resumed yanking at the solid metal. Monroe sighed. She wasn't getting though those bars without a blow torch, but apparently it was no use telling her that.

"What about you? Do you remember movies?"

"A few. I used to watch a lot of Disney with my Mom." Monroe's smile was genuine, trying to imagine Rachel siting through films featuring helpless girls being rescued by men.

"Really? Which ones?"

"I think I remember one with a girl fighting with a sword…That was mom's favorite." Of course it would be.

"What was yours?" Most little girls dreamed of being princesses. Which had Charlie liked the best? Cinderella? Snow White? Sleeping Beauty?

"It was about a guy raised by gorillas. Later he meets a girl named Jane…" Monroe searched the recesses of his memory for clues.

"_Tarzan_."

"Yeah. There was this really great song that the mother gorilla sings to Tarzan. It's about how she'll always love and take care of him. Mom would sing to me and my brother when we were sad or sick." Rachel had sung to Charlie? Monroe knew mothers did that, but he'd never connected it with Rachel. As a mother it was easier for him to see her as the fierce protector, not the soft nurturer.

"How does it go? I don't remember many songs from before the Blackout."

"I don't remember the words anymore." Charlie's face had closed down again. Was she thinking of her mother? Of her brother? Of something else entirely?

"Too bad."

"What do you remember most about your mother?" Charlie's question caught him completely off guard.

"My mother? I don't actually remember anything about her. I was orphaned when I was two and in foster care after that." Monroe decided there was no harm in using his own history as far as he was able. It would be easy than keeping track of lies.

"Foster care? What's that?"

"It's something the government used to do to kids without parents. They find them temporary homes for them to stay in." 'Homes' might have been a generous term, given some of the places he'd stayed.

"Too bad we don't have anything like that now. I know a bunch of kids who could really someone to look after them." Monroe wondered who she could have been talking about. As he understood it, village took care of the children communally, even if something happen to a particular child's parents.

"What do you mean?"

"On my way here, I came across this group of kids, orphans, living wild with no adults. It turns out their parents were rebels and one day the Militia came. They hid the kids under the floorboards. When they finally came out their parents were lying there, slaughtered. It's how I ended up with my brand. The Militia took the oldest boy to be brainwashed into becoming a soldier. I decided to try and help. I tricked them into grabbing me." Monroe wasn't sure which piece of information to process first.

"You got yourself recruited on purpose?" Charlie's selflessness and nerve seemed to be the simplest thing to deal with.

"It was the easiest way to get inside." She shrugged, like it was no big deal that she had volunteered to risk her freedom for a group of strangers.

"That was brave of you." Stupid, but brave.

"Don't be too impressed. I wasn't able to break the boy out on my own. I got caught, which is how I ended up with the Militia mark."

"If you got caught, then how did you escape?" This part of the story he was somewhat familiar with, but he wanted to see how much she would tell him.

"My uncle rescued me." Uncle. It wasn't much, but it was something.

"Any chance he'll turn up around here anytime soon?" Charlie's eyes narrowed at him, then swept up and down the hall of the jail. Monroe raised a hand in apology, "Sorry, question withdrawn. New topic: Cookies."

"Cookies?" Charlie echoed in disbelief.

"Cookies. You asked me before about my mother, and I said she died when I was two, which is true, but there was someone who was like a mother to me. She was the mother of my best friend and she made the best cookies in the world. Whenever I came over to stay the night she'd make a fresh batch of jelly cookies cookies. They were my favorite." Offering up something of himself seemed like the easiest method of maintaining her trust, but it wasn't without cost. Marie's baking had always been like flaky pieces of heaven to him and Marie had been an angel. What would she say to him, if she appeared before him now?

"Mine too." Charlie's words pulled Monroe out of his dark thoughts.

"Really?"

"Yeah. My mom made jelly cookies with orange zest and raspberry in the middle." Charlie was describing Marie's cookies. Ben must have saved the recipe and given it to Rachel. He and Charlie had something in common. Monroe had the simultaneous impulses to both laugh and cry.

"I wish I had one of those cookies right now. What about you? What do you wish for?" If Monroe could figure out what Charlie wanted then perhaps he could negotiate for whatever secrets she held. For a full minute Charlie didn't answer him. When she did speak she sounded weary, far more than someone of her years should.

"I used to wish for adventure. I used to wish I could leave my village and go on a journey. I wished I could meet new people, see all the things I'd only seen in postcards." It seemed like an innocent and natural enough wish for someone Charlie's age. It was the time for stupid crazy adventures. Monroe had been two years under than Charlie when he'd joined the Marines.

"And then what happened?" Though he asked the question, he knew the answer. He had happened.

"I got what I wanted." Charlie turned away from him, clearly done talking for the moment. It was just as well, because Monroe couldn't think of another word to say.

**Please Review! Questions and comments are what keep me going! Well that and my deep and abiding love for Bass…**


	11. Promises

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. God Bass was tired of walking. 940 miles from Parris Island to Chicago. Under ideal conditions it would have taken less than a month. It had taken nine. They'd gone off course, been forced to stop due to injuries, and run into more than their fair share of skirmishes. They'd also been slowed down by the people they'd picked-up along the way. Eventually winter had come and they'd been forced hole up and ride out the cold. It had been easier at the beginning, when Bass had known where he was going and why.

He didn't regret going AWOL. Bass had loved his country, but Miles was his family. There was no competition. There was also the fact that Miles wasn't the only one who'd wanted to learn the fate of the Mathesons. He hadn't laid eyes on Rachel in over six years. Six years. Jesus. Charlotte has been just a baby then. Now she was school-aged, at least she would have been if schools still existed.

Bass knew from the pictures he'd taken from Matheson's abandoned house that the girl was the spitting image of her mother. He'd found a photo of just the pair of them, with their arm around each other grinning at the camera. He'd stuffed it inside his jacket along with a dozen others he'd found.

A few he'd chosen because they had the whole family and he figured he could show the picture to people he'd came across. The other pictures he'd taken just for himself: Bass and Miles as little boys; Marie, Bass, Miles, and Ben at Ben's graduation; Rachel, Ben, Bass, and Miles out at the bar they'd gone to that first Thanksgiving after the turkey-gorging had been completed. Bass smiled, remembering how Rachel had hustled him out of twenty bucks playing pool. It felt like a lifetime ago. What if she was dead?

Bass shook himself. No. NO. He could NOT think that way. Rachel was stronger and smarter than Bass had ever been. She was alive, and he would find her. He had to find her and not just for his own sake, for Miles' as well.

Miles had sent Bass on alone to find his family. He said he needed to stay to their men. Their men, he'd said, like the gang survivors that they'd slowly collected were soldiers under his and Miles command.

Bass and Miles had a huge fight over it, maybe the biggest they had in the history of their friendship. Bass had yelled that Miles had lost sight of what they traveled hundreds of miles for. Rachel, Ben, Charlotte and Danny were all that mattered now.

Miles had disagreed. He said they had a responsibly to help restore some kind of an order to the world. He said they had to protect the people who couldn't protect themselves. It all sounded great in theory, but in practice it was like living in a Western. 'Justice' was decided not by twelve people on a jury, but by one man holding a gun.

Bass knew why Miles was reacting this way. Between the two of them, Miles had always been the more compassionate. Bass felt for the people who'd fallen victim to the violence of this broken world, but he was able to separate himself from it. Life had taught him how to make himself numb. It was a skill Miles had never acquired. He couldn't ignore the bodies the way Bass could; he couldn't shield himself from the grief and anger. Bass understood Miles' need for retribution, but he was terrified of what Miles would do to satisfy that need.

The fact that people were listening to Miles only made matters worse. Jeremy had been the first to join them on the journey North, but he wasn't the last. Some had been rescued and others had just wanted the protection of former soldiers and superior numbers. By the time they'd reached Illinois, they had a camp of two dozen men and women. Miles had taken it upon himself to teach them basic weapons and hand to hand. He said he wanted them to be able to defend themselves, but Bass wasn't sure he was being completely honest. It was one of the reasons finding the Mathesons was so important. Bass didn't seem to be reaching him, but maybe Ben could.

Finding the address of the house in Chicago had been the easy part. The house was empty and mercifully there had been no bodies, so Bass had assumed the family had fled together. He found a map of Chicago and followed the quickest route out of the city. He'd kept moving in the same direction one he'd hit the city's limits. He'd been wandering for months, flashing the Matheson's photo to ever non-homicidal stranger he'd come across. He'd followed a half dozen false leads, more than one of which had turned out to be an ambush. A few weeks ago he'd come across a couple who said they'd seen a family of four from a distance. They'd been hadn't gotten close enough to be able to make out faces, but it had looked like a man, a woman, and a little girl and boy. It was probably another dead end, but Bass couldn't give up. If he stopped and went back he'd be admitting to himself that he would never see her again. That he would never see either of them again.

Bass suddenly stopped walking. He could see something in the forest clearing thirty yards in front of him. He drew his gun and approached as silently as he could manage. As he crept closer he could see that it was the body of a man. His eyes were wide open in shock. Bass was no doctor, but he guessed cause of death was the gaping bullet wound in his chest. There was a pile of dry sticks near the body. The poor guy had probably been gathering firewood when some lunatic came along and killed him. Bass patted down the body to make sure he didn't have anything useful on him. He felt a small lump in the inner jacket pocket. It turned out to be matches. Bass shoved them into his pants. It felt a little ghoulish, but the man wouldn't be using them anymore and in this brave new world, the squeamish didn't survive.

Bass heard a small noise. A whimper, coming from somewhere nearby. Someone was still here. He raised his gun and crept in the direction of the sound. There was a large log laying in his path. He stopped when he was ten feet away and listened. He heard it again, although this time it was softer, muffled.

"I know you're there, behind the log. Come out now." There was silence for a moment, then a rock came hurling toward him, hitting him in the gut. The wind was immediately knocked out of his stomach.

"Come on!" Two small blond figures burst out from behind the log and sprinted away from him. Without thinking, Bass gave chase. He caught them in about ten seconds. Grabbing their arms, he spun them around. His jaw dropped in shock. Charlotte. He'd found her. She swung her fists at him, violently beating on his arms. Danny was crying, but that didn't stop him from kicking at Bass' shins.

"Charlotte and Danny, stop!" The children stopped at hitting him.

"How do know our names?" Charlotte narrowed her bright blue eyes at him suspiciously.

"Because I'm your friend." It was lame, he knew, but the best he could think of, under the circumstances.

"You're not our friend. You're a STRANGER!" Charlotte's words hit him harder than her rock had. He had become a stranger to every Matheson, but Miles. He'd chosen to distance himself, and at the time it seemed like the right choice to make, but now he wasn't as sure.

"No, no I'm not a stranger. I know your Mommy and Daddy. Their names are Ben and Rachel Matheson. I'm really good friends with your Uncle Miles. Do you remember him?" He knew Miles had visited the Mathesons a few times since Charlotte's baptism, but she might have been too young to remember.

"He had the car with the funny music player." Bass laughed, remember how he used to tease Miles about his resistance to new technology. It was ironic, considering how everything had turned out.

"Yes, that's right. I can prove I'm not a stranger, but I need to let you go to do it. Do you promise not to run if I do?" Charlotte and Danny nodded in unison.

"We promise."

"Okay." Bass released their arms and stuck his hand into his pocket. He pulled out the photographs and flipped to the one that showed him, Miles, Ben, and Rachel all together. He handed it Charlotte. She squinted at it and looked back at him.

"You really know our Mommy and Daddy?"

"Yes, I do and I came here to find them. Do you know where they are?" Charlotte's lower lip began to tremble. It suddenly occurred to Bass how odd it was that Charlotte and Danny would be out here alone. Add the fact he'd found them hiding ten yards from a dead body and he didn't like what he'd come up with.

"Mommy told us to stay here and keep quiet, and we did. There was a lot off loud voices and a bang and when we peeked she was gone. I think it was bad men." Charlotte blinked and squeezed her brother's hand. Bass could tell she was trying hard not to cry. He knew how she felt. It sound like Rachel had been abducted and the dead body had likely been her handiwork. He doubted her kidnappers had anything good in store for her, especially if she's killed one of their own. The only encouraging thing was that they hadn't murdered her on the spot. That meant there was a chance she was still alive. Bass' first instinct was to start tracking her immediately, but he couldn't leave Rachel's kids here alone. He made a split second decision.

"We need to find your Daddy. Do you remember where you're camped?" Charlotte nodded, then bit her lip.

"Mommy told us to stay here." Rachel was in danger. He didn't have time to argue with a seven-year old. Bass struggled to keep his impatience out of his voice.

"Mommy would want you both to be safe. We're going to find your Daddy and then I'll go and you're your Mommy. Okay?" He held out his hand to Charlotte, but she looked unsure. Bass sighed. He squatted down so he was on eye level with the girl.

"Charlotte, listen to me. I promise I will do everything in my power to keep you safe." As he said the words, he knew he meant them. He would die for her if he had to.

"And Danny and Mommy and Daddy?" Bass hesitated. Giving his word to a child wasn't like giving his word to an adult. An adult might understanding extenuating circumstances, but a child would not. The promise had to be kept, no exceptions, no excuses, no matter what.

"I'll do my best." Charlotte gave him a small smile and put her hand in his. It was small, soft and warm.

"Charlie. Everybody calls me Charlie."


	12. Phase Two

The Blackout changed so much about the world, but after fifteen years Monroe had grown accustomed to most of it. Trading cars for horses and light bulbs for candles was easier than the general had thought it would be. He honestly didn't regret losing the internet, cell phones, or video games. Watches, however, he still missed to this day. Hours and minutes mattered to Monroe.

With every second that passed the pendant could be traveling farther and farther away from him. It could fall into the hands of the Rebels, or God forbid, one of the other nations. Monroe knew that despite his best efforts, enemy spies were roaming free in his Republic. If they caught wind of what he was after, it could mean the lives of everyone in his nation. Where was the necklace? If Charlie knew the answer, Monroe knew she wouldn't give it up easily.

He'd tried a few times to restart their conversation, but Charlie no longer seemed interested in chatting. He'd gotten as far he was going to get in this phase of his plan. Monroe considered what he learned so far. There was very little of vital importance, but he'd nudged her into revealing a little about herself. Charlie put on a tough front, and she'd learned to be cautious, but she had a soft heart. He could exploit that.

Monroe's ears picked up the sound of boots and he turned to see Tom and three guards approaching the cells. It was time for the second part of Monroe's plan.

"I trust you've had enough time to get to know each other. How are you getting along?" This script had been written by Monroe before he'd donned his prisoner disguise. They'd agreed beforehand that if Monroe succeeded, the general would answer: 'Very well' and the charade would be over.

"What's it to you?" His words were a signal to Tom that they needed to proceed to the next step. The general wasn't looking forward to it, but he was confident he could perform his role credibly.

"James here has been so lonely over the past few weeks, haven't you James?" That was his cue.

"How could I be lonely when we've been spending so much quality time together?" Monroe spat out 'quality time' to make it clear his meetings with Captain Neville had been very unpleasant.

"I thought you might prefer the company of a kindred spirit. She doesn't like me much either, do you, Charlie?" Charlie crossed her arms over her chest and took a stance so familiar it caused Monroe's heart to constrict.

"You killed my father, kidnapped my brother, and tried to choke me death, so no, I'm not your biggest fan." Monroe's scowl, which had been part of his performance, turned genuine at Charlie's final grievance.

Tom had choked her? Charlie's throat was free of bruises, so Monroe assumed the incident had taken place when Charlie's had tried to free her brother from Captain Neville's custody. Monroe was more grateful than ever that Tom hadn't been the only Neville on the train that day.

"See, you two have so much in common." The captain's words were truer than he realized. Monroe and Charlie were probably both imagining what it would feel like to punch him in the face.

"What's your point?" The general knew the anger he was feeling was irrational, but his mind couldn't communicate that thought to the rest of his body. His hands curled into fists that hungered to connect with one of Captain Neville's kidneys.

"The point is that you both have information that is vital to the Republic and I'm going to help you do patriotic duty." Patriotic duty; that was what Monroe needed to direct his energy towards. He would use the feeling that had overtaken him to serve his country.

"Like hell." Monroe glanced at Charlie in shock, only to discover she was glancing at him in the same way. They had spoken the exact same words at the same time.

"Grab him." Monroe put on a performance of resistance, but the men eventually subdued him.

"I'm not telling you a damn thing." Tom smiled his most civilized smile.

"It's not you I want to hear from just now. You and Charlie are both so selfless, so willing to suffer for your cause, but are you as willing to let someone else take the punishment for your defiance?" Tom nodded at the guards and Monroe instinctively tightened his abdomen. It didn't matter, the blow still hurt like hell.

"Stop it!" The officer hit him again, despite Charlie's command.

"I can't stop it, Charlie. Only you can. My men will keep beating him until you tell me everything you know about the pendant."

"What are you talking about?!" Monroe braced himself for more punishment. The soldier delivered a punch to his jaw. He didn't have to fake the grunt of pain. Spots appeared before his eyes, obstructing his vison.

"The pendant that belong to your father, the pendant that can bring the power back." Monroe twisted his neck to look at Charlie. She was staring at him with tears glittering in her eyes. He was hurting her. She was suffering, because he was suffering. He silently begged her to end it for both of them. She whispered something so softly he couldn't make it out. Captain Neville raised a hand to halt the soldier raining blow down on him.

"What was that?" Charlie never took her eyes off Monroe as she opened her mouth again.

"I said: I. Don't. Know . Anything." Tears were rolling down her cheeks, but her jaw was firmly clenched. Whatever ever secrets she had, she was keeping them to herself. As Monroe's beating resumed he kept his eyes locked on her face.

"Where is it?"

"I don't know."

"Where is it?"

"I don't know!" Back and forth they went, God knew how many times. Monroe predicted that not an inch of his torso was going to be pink by the time they finished. After a while he had trouble distinguishing new pain from old. The only clues he had that a fresh blow had been struck were Charlie's small winces. He expected her to close her eyes or look away, but she didn't. At last the arms that had been holding him up released him, and he fell to the concrete floor.

"Charlie Matheson once again, I underestimated you. You are one cold bitch." Neville was wrong, Monroe dimly released. The captain hadn't seen her eyes. Charlie bore witness to every punch, not because it didn't bother her, but because it did. It wasn't apathy, it was empathy. It was self-punishment.

A feeling bubbled up inside of Monroe that he almost didn't recognize. He realized with a start that it was pride. He was lying bruised and bloody inside a filthy cell, his plans having completely failed, and yet a part of him was happy Charlie hadn't broken. None of it made any sense.

"James, I apologize. I thought she'd show you a little more compassion. Don't worry, you'll have the chance to repay her in kind. Open it." For a moment Monroe had thought the ringing in his ears had caused him to mishear Captain Neville, but then he saw the soldiers unlock Charlie's cell.

"What are you doing?" He watched helplessly as the three men who'd departed his cell, marched into Charlie's. This wasn't part of the plan. She tried to fight them off, but against three trained soldiers Charlie didn't stand a chance. Two of the men secured her arms and the third stood in front of her, ready to obey whatever order he was given.

"It should be fairly obvious. Charlie had her chance to talk, and now it's your turn. I can't go back to General Monroe with nothing to show for it. He expects results, not excuses. Do you have the location I need?" Neville was asking him yet again, if he'd accomplished what he'd set out to, and the answer unfortunately, was still negative.

"No."

"That's a shame." Tom nodded at the soldiers. The third man hit Charlie in the stomach. Her face twisted in pain.

"No!" Monroe pushed himself up to sitting position, though it felt his muscles were on fire. The soldier hit Charlie again. He felt rage the likes of which he hadn't felt in years. He couldn't even sit up straight, yet he felt if he could reach the bars of his cage he could bend the metal with his bare hands.

"I said STOP!" He was General Sebastian Monroe of the Monroe Republic, and NO ONE disobeyed him! He would have Captain Neville court-martialed, he would-

"Don't tell them." Charlie's voice interrupted his train of thought. Her eyes bore into his and he found himself mesmerized by the familiar iridescent blue. He knew that look, he'd seen it a thousand times before on the faces of rebels he'd captured. He remembered the words of one of the men, whose name he'd never even learned, 'They're scared to death of you…but I'm not.' It was the look of a soul ready to die for what they believed in. A fist slammed into Charlie's face.

"ENOUGH!" Monroe bellowed at Captain Neville. Tom's eyes widened slightly at the expression on Monroe's face. He jerked his chin and the soldier delivered a hard blow to Charlie's temple. Her slim frame immediately went limp.

"What-" Tom raised a hand to cut him off.

"It she out?" The general bit his tongue and waited for the soldiers to inspect Charlie. They lowered her to the ground, picked one of her arms and let it drop. It fell like a piece of cooked spaghetti.

"Yes, sir." The men stood at attention, awaiting further orders. Tom turned and smiled pleasantly at Monroe.

"My apologies, General. I didn't want to risk your cover." Monroe ignored the captain and address the men.

"Leave us. Now." The soldiers saluted and filed out of the holding area. Monroe waited until they were out of earshot before turning on Neville. Slowly he positioned his legs underneath him and stood. He body vehemently protested as he took crossed his cage and wrapped his hands around the cell door.

"What the hell did you think you doing?" He kept his voice low. If Charlie suddenly regained consciousness, he didn't want to be overheard.

"Following your orders, Sir." His subordinate had the nerve to look confused.

"My orders were to beat me, not her." He had proposed the prison buddy scenario with this contingency in mind. He suspected someone like Charlie would be more affected watching someone else's pain than experiencing it herself.

"With respect, Sir, that tactic didn't appearance to be working."

"You didn't give it long enough. She would have broken." Even as he said the words, he wasn't sure he'd believed them. Charlie was stronger than he'd ever imagined. It wasn't only in looks that she resembled her mother.

"I didn't want to risk permanent damage to you, sir." Monroe snorted dismissively, even as his body ached. He been a soldier for more than twenty years, he'd been though far worse.

"I could have handled it." He was the President of the Monroe Republic. If he wasn't willing to bleed a little to protect his country, he didn't deserve his position.

"Sir, if the President of our Republic were to become incapacitated it would embolden our enemies and put our nation at risk." Monroe knew that Neville had a point. Not only was he the commander of the Militia, he was their symbol. The country was named after him. The Ms on the soldiers uniforms now only stood for "Monroe". The Plains Nation would still be the Plains Nation if its leader fell. What would happen to Monroe's country, if he was gone? Perhaps Tom had been right to be cautious.

"Whether or not you abandoned our strategy too soon is debatable, but what you did after was not. I never authorized you to touch the girl; in fact I'm fairly certain I said that physical interrogation was not a viable option." Perhaps he hadn't used those exact words, but he'd made his feelings on the issue pretty damn clear.

"With respect sir, you suggested she wouldn't crack under physical interrogation, and it appears you were correct, but that wasn't purpose of the exercise." Purpose of the exercise? Tom hadn't just defied him on a whim, his actions were pre-meditated.

"Then what was?" Monroe kept his voice soft, but there was an unmistakable edge to it. Captain Neville had better hope Monroe agreed with his reasoning, or there would be hell to pay.

"You said she would be open to emotional manipulation. She's bound to felt guilt over letting you take that beating. I thought we could capitalize on that." Tom swallowed hard, and waited for Monroe's signal to continue. It was comforting to know he could inspire fear, even when he was barely able to stand.

"How?"

"When she wakes up, you can tell her that you broke. You gave up your friends to protect her from harm. She'll be putty in yours hands." Monroe couldn't find fault in Neville's thought process. He'd never admit it, but his plan had hit a rock wall. If Neville hadn't acted as he had, Monroe would have been forced to revisit options he'd already rejected, options that made him sick to even think about. Tom had presented him with another chance to end this on his own terms. He couldn't afford to squander it.

"I'll tell her you scheduled my execution. That should help." Charlie would probably feel safer discussing sensitive information, if she believed he would take it to his grave. Tom nodded and waited to be dismissed. Monroe was about to give the order when he heard a small moan. Charlie was coming around. Soon he'd have what he needed from her, and when he did, he'd be forced to reveal himself. She'd hate him for his deception, but she'd hate herself more for being taken in. He owed her something.

"I want the names of every commanding officer who has ever collected crops from Charlie's village. I want the list on my desk by the time she wakes up. Dismissed." Captain Neville saluted and retreated. Monroe waited until he heard the door close before collapsing once again on the floor. Charlie murmured incoherently. It wouldn't be long now.


	13. The Rescue

It had taken them forty minutes, but they'd finally found the campsite. Bass had spotted the bright red tent through the trees and when he'd pointed it out to Charlie, she had squealed with excitement. When they'd reached the clearing they found Ben sitting on a small boulder with a worried expression on his face.

"Daddy!" Charlie released Bass' hand and sprinted to Ben, dragging her brother behind. They both flung themselves at their father, wrapping their arms around his waist. Ben returned their embraces. Bass stood there awkwardly, waiting for Ben to notice him.

"Charlie! Danny! Thank God. Where's your moth-" The words seemed to die in his throat as he caught sight of Bass.

"Bass?" Ben said his name hesitantly, as though he thought his eyes might be playing tricks on him. With a few unsteady steps Ben closed the distance between them. His wide eyes were glued to Bass as though he might vanish in a puff of smoke.

"It's me, Ben." The former marine barely had time to blink before he found himself crushed in a bear hug.

"Jesus, it's good to see to you." Bass awkwardly returned Ben's embrace. He hadn't expected this kind of reception, but he probably should have. It was the end of the world. In this atmosphere of death and uncertainty, every human connection was heightened somehow.

"Rachel's in trouble Ben." Ben immediately pulled away from Bass.

"What?"

"I found Charlie and Danny in the woods alone, and from what they told me it sounds like she's been taken. I'm going after her." Bass could only pray he wasn't too late. He turned to leave when Ben's voice suddenly stopped him.

"I'm coming with you." Bass spun around and saw Ben reach into his jacket pocket and pull out a revolver. Bass' jaw dropped.

Before the world had ended Ben had HATED violence of any kind. One of the biggest fights Miles and Ben had ever was over Miles joining the Marines. The sight of Ben awkwardly holding a gun was one of the more jarring things Bass had seen since The Blackout.

"No, you're not." Ben might have been theoretically willing to take a life to save Rachel, but theoretically and actually were two very different things. He wasn't a soldier; he didn't have the training Bass did. Ben would just get in the way.

"She's my wife." Bass was amazed that after all this time those words still hurt him. He pushed his feelings aside and looked beyond Ben to where Charlie and Danny were holding hands and watching them argue.

"And those are your kids. You need to stay here and keep them safe." Ben hesitated and glanced back at his children.

"But-" Ben's voice trailed off helplessly. Bass knew Ben was struggling to come up with a reason he needed to come along. For the first time in his life, Bass pitied Ben. It had to be hell knowing Rachel was in danger, but being unable to do anything about it. As bad as he felt however, Bass didn't have time to sugarcoat the situation.

"Ben, you'll just slow me down, and Rachel can't afford that." Rachel's name was the wakeup call Ben needed. He nodded and motioned for Bass to go. Bass had taken two steps before it occurred to him that he had forgotten something. "In case I don't make it back: Miles is camped in the Willow Slough State Game preserve. The preserve is south of here. You can probably make it within a week. Here," Miles passed Ben the map he'd been carrying and the picture he'd shown Charlie to prove who he was, "These should help you find them." Bass wasn't sure what exactly he was walking into, but at least he knew whatever happened, he'd done his part to reunite the Mathesons.

He was about to leave when Charlie approached him. He was afraid for a second that he was going to have to dissuade yet another Matheson from joining him, but he was wrong.

"Be careful," was all she said. Bass, smiled and nodded, touched the girl cared.

Bass was back at the clearing in less than thirty minutes and he was shocked to discover that the body was gone. Only some dried blood remained to mark the spot where the man had lay. Whoever took Rachel must have come back for the corpse. Bass said a silent prayer of thanks that he'd gotten Charlie and Danny back to their father before the abductors returned.

It only took Bass about ten seconds to pick up the trail. Foot prints in the dirt, bent grass, and broken branches all pointed him in the direction of his quarry.

The former marine had been tracking for an hour before he began to worry about the fading light. Bass was started to fear he'd lose the trail in the dark when he smelled the first sign that he was getting close. Someone was cooking meat nearby.

Bass drew his gun and followed the scent to the abductor's camp. He squatted behind a bush and surveyed the scene. The first thing he noticed was the blonde woman tied to a tree on the opposite side of the clearing. Rachel. She was alive.

Rachel had been beaten. There were fresh bruises on her face and she was bleeding a little from a small cut on her head. He noted with relief that he couldn't see any other obvious injuries. Bass turned his attention to Rachel's captors.

One man stood in front of a fire, holding a stick that had some kind of meat speared on the end. A woman and another man sat on a log behind their companion. The man was scanning the tree line and holding a semi-automatic in his lap. Bass crouched lower. The thick bramble should hide him from view, but he wasn't taking any chances.

The woman seemed less vigilant, popping pieces of cooked meat into her mouth, but Bass noticed a shotgun leaning up against the log beside her. The last thing he wanted was to get Rachel caught in the middle of a gun fight. Bass would to choose his moment and take them all out before they knew what hit them. Bass watched as the woman paused with only a few more bites of meat left on her stick.

"I'm feeling a little peckish. Anybody else feel like seconds?" She looked over at the Rachel and laughed. The man still cooking his dinner also chuckled. Bass didn't get it. Standards of humor had definitely been lowered since the Blackout. The man keeping watch frowned, but didn't take his eyes off the forest's edge.

"Don't even think about it. There's nothing left in this area for us. We can't afford to be greedy." This was definitely the man to watch. He had to be the leader, and as such he would be Bass' first target. The woman rolled her eyes and stood up.

"Relax, I was just teasing. Besides it would be rude to have seconds before our new friend here has even had her first helping. What do you say, honey? Are you hungry?" The second man laughed again, as though the woman had said something hilarious. These people had clearly lost their minds along with their sense of decency. The woman swaggered over Rachel and removed her gag so she could respond. Rachel stared down her kidnapper with a brazen fearlessness that would have made an action hero proud.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to play with your food?" Rachel's response confused Bass, but prompted the loudest guffaws yet from the man Bass mentally dubbed 'Chuckles'. The woman didn't seem to find the retort nearly so humorous. Quick as a flash, she sucker punched Rachel. Bass tightened he grip on his gun and willed himself not to move. The woman sneered as Rachel sucked in a few deep breaths.

"You think you're so much better than us, don't you, you skinny bitch? Well you're not; you're a killer, just like us. In fact WE are better than YOU, because we use what we kill. What you did was wasteful. Richard deserved better." Richard? That had to be the man in the woods Rachel had shot. What did the woman mean by 'use what they kill'?

"I'm sure he would appreciate what you're doing for him." The woman nodded, apparently missing the heavy sarcasm in Rachel's voice.

"Yes, he would. We are honoring him by giving his death meaning. Now it's your turn." The woman walked back to her stick and pulled the remaining meat from it and returned to stand in front of Rachel. Rachel's look of disgust had transformed into totally revulsion. In one horrible moment it all clicked into place. The jokes, the talk of honoring Richard, Rachel's comment about 'playing with your food.' They were cannibals. Rachel had been abducted by a gang of Hannibal Lector aficionados and they were trying to feed her human flesh.

"Kayla-" The man with the gun sounded weary, as though her antics were trying his nerves. The woman turned her attention away from Rachel for the moment to glare at him.

"What? This bitch killed Richard. I'm entitled to have a little fun." She crossed her arms and pouted at him. The man sighed heavily and nodded.

"Fine, but, it's a waste of food, if you ask me." The woman, Kayla, smiled like she'd just been told she'd won a free trip to Hawaii. It was the sickest thing Bass had seen in this post-apocalyptical nightmare, and he had seen some pretty sick things.

"Open wide," Kayla sang like a mother trying to get her baby to eat its vegetables. Rachel kept her lips pressed firmly together.

"Brian, will you open her mouth for me?" The man sighed again, set his gun down, and stomped over to Rachel. Now was his chance. Bass stood and fired three shots. Three bodies collapsed on the forest floor. Bass cautiously entered the camp ground. He could feel Rachel's eyes on him as he checked the pulses of the three cannibals. Dead, dead, and dead.

"Bass?" Rachel's voice was so soft it barely sounded like her. Bass finally met her eyes and found wonder there. Where Ben had looked at him like he was a ghost, Rachel looked at him like he was an angel.

"Hi, Rachel." He quickly cast his eyes down, desperate to avoid her gaze. It was hard enough being this close to her again without her looking at him like that. Bass' eyes fell on a knife. He scooped it up and began sawing at her ropes.

Two minutes later the last of the cord gave way and Rachel was free. Only after Bass had stepped away did he risk another look at her. She was still staring at him as though she was in some kind of trance. Bass told himself it was just shock and that he shouldn't read anything into it, but it still made his heart beat erratically.

Without blinking Rachel pulled off the gag that had been hanging around her throat and dropped it on Kayla's body. She stepped forward and enfolded Bass in a fierce embrace. His arms instinctively wrapped themselves her as though the gesture were the habit of a lifetime. After a few seconds Bass realized Rachel was shaking. He heard the softest of sobs. Rachel was crying. He rubbed her back in small circles.

"It's alright, Rachel. Everything is going to be alright." It didn't matter that they stood there surrounded by dead bodies, or that Miles might be headed off the deep end, or even that Rachel had a family he'd promised to return her to. He was alive, she was alive and they were together again. It was enough.


	14. Success

Charlie groaned and rolled over on the floor of her cell. She'd been hovering on the brink of regaining consciousness for a half an hour. Monroe could see a goose egg had swelled on the side of her head. The first he'd do when they were done here was order some ice for the bruise. No, that was the second thing. The first thing would be assembled high ranking personal and brief them on the information he'd extracted from Charlie.

He should wake her so he could complete his mission and they could both be free of this place. Still, he was reluctant. This would his last chance to talk to Charlie before he turned back into General Monroe. James may have been a stranger to her, but he was a stranger she'd talked to. He was a stranger she'd cried for. No one cried for General Monroe.

Monroe shook his head. He was being ridiculous and weak. James was an illusion he'd created for Charlie and now he was falling for it himself. He needed to remember who he was. Perhaps General Monroe wasn't loved, but he was needed. He was depended upon to protect the people of his nation from his soldiers to civilians like Charlie. Many of them hated him for it, but he would bear that burden as he had borne so many others for the greater good.

"Charlie," Monroe called softly.

"Dad?" Charlie murmured not opening her eyes. Her voice was so hopeful it sent a fresh stab of pain through his broken body.

"Charlie, open your eyes." Charlie's eyelids fluttered, then lifted reveal their intense blue once again. Her lips turned down a bit when she realized who had been calling her.

"I guess I'm not exactly who you were hoping to see." Charlie favored him with an apologetic grin as she pushed herself upright.

"I was dreaming that I was home and everything that happened was a just a nightmare." Monroe was intimately familiar with the sensation. How many nights had he spent visiting better days? How many mornings had he opened his eyes and been slapped in the face with cruel reality?

"No such luck." Charlie tenderly touched the swelling bruise on her forehead and winced. Suddenly she turned back to face Monroe, eyes narrowed.

"How did you know my name?" Suspicion had once again infiltrated her voice.

"What?" Monroe struggled to focus, in spite of his pounding headache. Had he given himself away?

"When you were calling me, you used my name." How could had have been so careless? Charlie had seemed so soft and vulnerable in her sleep, but he should have known better than to drop his guard. Rachel also looked like an angel when she slumbered, but that had never stopped her from trying to shank him when she was awake.

"Neville mentioned it." Monroe was careful not to let his relief show as Charlie nodded slowly.

"That's right. He called you 'John'." No, that wasn't right. Monroe had chosen 'James'as his cover identity. It was his middle name, so he figured it would be easy to remember.

"James." Charlie nodded again, this time a bit more freely and smiled. Had she been testing him? If so, she was savvier than he'd realized.

"Right, James. What's with the food?" She'd finally noticed the prop he'd sent for not long after Captain Neville had left. He pushed the tray towards the bars of Charlie's cell.

"It's all yours. I've lost my appetite." Charlie's eyebrows furrowed as she inspected Monroe's offering, eyeing the apple like she thought it might be an enemy spy.

"I doubt it's poisoned, Charlie. They have much more direct ways of killing people around here." Knifes were standard for ordinary prisoners. More prominent criminals such military traitors or rebel leaders received public beheadings.

"Seriously, why did they give you food?" Charlie reached through the bar as she spoke and picked up the red and yellow Macintosh. Monroe waited until she crunched into the fruit's shiny skin before answering.

"They like to observe the niceties on occasion." He was being deliberately vague, hoping it would make Charlie push harder for answers. She swallowed her bite of apple and frowned.

"What does that mean?" Monroe sighed as though this was something he didn't want to discuss.

"Forget it. Eat your apple." Charlie's scowl deepened and she returned the food to his tray without taking another bite. She crossed her arms over her chest.

"Tell me." Monroe fought to keep the grin of success from lighting his face. She was hooked.

"This is what they used to call a last meal. A prisoner is given his or her choice of food to eat before he or she is executed." Charlie's jaw dropped in horror, exactly as he'd hoped it would.

"Why are they executing you?! They said you had information they needed!" Charlie had thought he was safe because of the information Neville had claimed he had. That might explain her refusal to cave to Neville, the stakes may simply not have been high enough.

"'Had' being the operative word." Charlie shook her head in disbelief.

"You didn't. Please tell me you didn't." Monroe shrugged then winced as genuine pain coursed through his body. The bottoms of his feet may have been the only place he did not hurt.

"My days were numbered anyway. There was no point in letting them knock the stuffing out of you for another week of torture." Charlie's hands curled into tight balls.

"It would have bought you some time!" She was yelling at him. He was claiming to have traded his life to protect her from harm, and she was yelling him. A magic eight ball could probably predict Charlie's behavior better than Monroe could.

"Time to for what exactly? There is no escaping these cells and no one is coming to rescue me." Charlie's nostrils flared.

"So you're just giving up?! You're going to let them win?!" Monroe looked around his cell, trying to imagine what Charlie could be seeing that made his situation seem anything but completely hopeless.

"Charlie, look around you. They've already won." Her lips pressed together in a thin line and then she turned her back on him.

"You're an idiot." If he had actually exchanged his life for hers, Monroe would be feeling a little irritated right about now. Not only was Charlie not grateful for his supposed sacrifice, she was actually calling him names because of it.

"You're welcome," he grumbled sarcastically.

"You shouldn't have said anything. I told you NOT to say anything." Despite her words, Charlie's voice had lost quite a bit of its heated outrage. He wished she'd turned back around. She was hard enough to read when he could see her face. With her back to him, it was impossible to guess at what was going on inside her head.

"I'll try to listen better next time." Charlie fell silent. Monroe wasn't sure how best to move forward. Every time he tried to manipulate Charlie's emotions he appeared to pull all the wrong strings. He'd tried to make her grateful, and instead he'd made her angry. He'd failed completely. Well, technically, Neville had failed completely, as it had been his plan originally, but Monroe had thought it was a solid one.

"Is anything dislocated?" Charlie's had once again managed to catch him off guard.

"What?"

"My step-mom was a doctor. She taught me how to fix joints dislocations. Do you have any?" Monroe wasn't sure which piece of information to be more amazed at, Charlie's sudden lack of anger towards him, or the fact that Ben had apparently gotten remarried within the last five years.

"No. You have a step-mom?" Rachel's husband had moved on from losing his wife in less than half a decade. How had Ben managed to do in five years what Monroe hadn't been able to in over two decades?

"I HAD a step-mom. Her name was Maggie. She died about a month ago." Charlie still hadn't turned to look at him, but he suspected, based on the quaver in her voice, that she was fighting back tears.

"How?" Was this Maggie one more causality of war? Was his Militia once again responsible for taking another of Charlie's loved ones?

"It was a crazy old man. Maggie killed his attack dog. He stabbed her and she bled out." Something about events she described jogged Monroe's memory. Lieutenant Neville had mentioned the incident in his report. Neville hadn't known about the woman's connection with Charlie, or if he had he hadn't included it in the summary.

"I'm sorry for your loss." Monroe suddenly flashed back to day of Marie Matheson's funeral. He and Miles had been seniors in high school when the accident happened. A drunk driver had hit her car as she was coming home from work. He remembered how uncomfortable he'd felt, standing in the cheap suit he'd bought for the occasion. He remembered that as they lowered the casket into the ground, he'd felt angry instead of sad.

His tie had felt like he was choking him and all he could think about was the driver of the other car. The man had been sentenced to twenty years in prison. It hadn't felt like nearly enough. Monroe suddenly released there had been eight years left on the driver's sentence when the blackout hit. If there was any justice is the world, he'd been left inside his jail cell to rot.

"She shouldn't have come with me. I told her I didn't want her to come." Charlie's voice jerked him from his recollections. There was something familiar about those sentences. Then it clicked.

'You shouldn't have said anything. I told you NOT to say anything,' she'd told him. Charlie, either consciously or subconsciously, connected her step-mother's death with 'James' impeding execution. She did felt guilty after all. The revelation should have made him happy. It didn't.

"It wasn't your fault, Charlie." The words flew from his lips without his considering their impact. He should be trying to exploit her feelings guilt, not relieve her of them.

"I know that." She was lying, either to herself or to him. Charlie's shoulders were sagging under the weight of imagined sins.

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I DO." Charlie was wrapping herself in a cocoon of denial and Monroe needed to break through it. If she closed herself off, not only would it prevent him from getting the information she needed, but the wound would fester inside her, destroying her from within. Monroe would know, having dealt with his fair share of guilt.

"Prove it. Say 'What happened to Maggie wasn't my fault.' Unless, of course, you're afraid to try." Monroe was deliberating picking at Charlie's pride. If she was anything like Rachel she would be able to resist the challenge. It took Charlie all of three seconds to clear her throat.

"What happened-" Charlie's voice caught on the word, and she stopped.

"To Maggie-" Monroe prompted.

"To Maggie wasn't…wasn't…" Charlie shoulders started to shake, and the next moment he heard sobs, starting softly then getting louder. Monroe felt an unfamiliar feeling wash over, and it took him a moment to identify it as helplessness. It had been so long since he'd felt this uncertain and out of control. Monroe scooted closer to the cell bars that separated him from Charlie, ignorance his aching muscles.

"It is NOT your fault, Charlie, none of it. Not what happened to Maggie and not what's going to happen to me." Monroe reached his hand through the prison bar and rested it on Charlie's arm. She didn't respond to the contact, but she didn't pull away either. It was a strange feeling, touching Charlie this way. It had been instinct, as though somehow by making contact with her he could redirect the flow of her pain into him. He told himself this was no different than the times he'd come in after Strauser had finished his work and tended to some Rebel's wound. Police stations may have been vacant for fifteen years, but good cop, bad cop was still as effective as ever.

"What did you give them?" Charlie asked once her tears had finally subsided. She turned around to face him, and as she did Monroe pulled back his hand.

"The location I was scheduled to meet my next group of customers." The general had chosen to base his cover on an actual prisoner they had in custody about a year ago.

"Customers? What do you sell?"

"It's more of a service really. I'm what in the olden days was called a coyote. I helped people across the borders between nations. A lot of my customers aren't exactly on the best terms with the Republic." The border jumper had stuck in Monroe's mind, long after his execution, because he had been such a mystery to Monroe. The man claimed to be strictly a self-serving businessman, yet he'd taken all the information he'd had about his Rebel customers to his grave. To this day Monroe struggled to understand why.

"So you're a Rebel?" Charlie's question was the exact one he'd asked the man.

"No, not really."

"Why not?"

"Because the United States is a nice dream, but the Monroe Republic is the reality. I never saw the sense in dying for a fantasy." Although he was only reciting the coyote's words, Monroe couldn't help agreeing with them. Fantasy was the perfect word to describe what the Rebels were after. It wasn't that he didn't understand wishing the world could go back to the way it was before. He'd be a Marine for Christ's sake, and he'd sung "The Star Spangled Banner" with the best of them.

He recognized that the Monroe 'Republic' was a republic only in name. He knew the people of his nation missed the personal freedoms that they'd all once so foolishly believed were their God-given rights. None of that changed the fact that the things they'd lost were necessary sacrifices to ensure their survival.

"But you'll die to save some stranger from being punched in the face? You're right, that makes much more sense." It was nice to see Charlie had inherited Rachel's sarcasm.

"I'm a man of many contradictions. What about you? Are you sporting a red, white, and blue flag somewhere?" Monroe knew Charlie had to be angry about her father and her brother. The question was, had she completely crossed the line?

"No, I'm not a Rebel, at least I've never thought of myself as one. By their standards, maybe I am. I hate the Militia. I hate the things they've done. I hate how they think they just take whatever they want from whoever they want." Charlie's pretty face darkened, no doubt recollecting a wrong committed against her by his men.

"What did they take from you?" He had to ask the question, despite knowing the answer.

"My family. They came for my father. He didn't even break any of their laws; he just had something they wanted." There it was, the opportunity he had been looking for.

"Was that what Neville was taking about? The pendant?"

"Yes."

"Now, I was getting my ass kicked pretty hard, but did he say something about it being able to bring the power back?" Charlie paused a moment before answering.

"Yeah. It's crazy right?" In those four words she'd confirmed the existence of the pendant, what it did, and that at the very least she knew of its existence.

"Yeah. So what happened to you father?" Monroe knew Charlie would become more emotional if she was forced to relive what had to be one of the most painful moments in her life. The more emotional she was, the more likely she'd be to reveal everything she knew to him.

"My brother tried to get the Militia to leave my father alone, but then one of the soldiers fired his gun and Danny fired his crossbow and a bunch of people ended up dead, including my Dad. They took my brother instead." His soldiers had fired first. It shouldn't have mattered to Monroe, yet somehow it did. It was as those that particular stain on his soul had gotten a shade darker.

"Why?" Charlie believed her mother was dead, so she had no way of knowing Danny's true value. He was curious about what theories she'd come up with.

"My uncle thinks Danny is bait for him. They think he knows something about the power." Monroe would have never thought to use Miles' nephew to bring him in. As far as Monroe knew Miles hadn't seen Danny or Charlie since before the Blackout. The general didn't think Miles was attached to either of them enough for them to make good hostages. He might have to rethink that assumption, given that Charlie had evidently persuaded Miles to come along on this crusade of hers.

"Does he?" Miles had sworn he knew nothing about what Ben had been working on, and Monroe had never questioned that, right up until the day Miles had tried to kill him. After the betrayal Monroe had no idea what to believe.

"No. He was as shocked as I was when Aaron told us about the pendant. They've been fighting about was to do with it for days. My uncle wanted to destroy it, but the thing is apparently unbreakable. Aaron wanted to hold on to it. Nora thinks it could be just the advantage the Rebels need against the Militia."

Finally, success. Charlie had admitted that as of the date of her capture the pendant was still in the possession of the posse coming for Danny. Monroe knew he should call for the guard. He had what he needed from Charlie and time was of the essence. Despite this he found himself hesitating. This was the last opportunity he'd have for an honest, non-hostile conversation with Charlie.

"What do you think?" A few minutes one way or the other wouldn't hurt, and the more he knew about Charlie's current mindset, the better equipped he'd be to control her.

"I think if General Monroe got his hands on that pendant, thousands of people would die. Who knows, maybe millions of people." She wasn't wrong in her prediction. If he restored the power he'd use the military technology to cow his enemies into submission. He would reign down terror until all of North America was under his control. What Charlie didn't see yet was that those deaths would serve a greater purpose. Ultimately it would end the war and rebellion. It would stops future needless, because people would no longer be so foolish as to oppose him.

"So you'd rather the Rebels had it?" Did Charlie think that those self-righteous terrorists would be any less violent with the power than he was? If she did, then she'd need to be re-educated about exactly what those rebels did for their cause.

"Someone has to stop him. Someone needs to make him pay for all he's done." There was cold fury in her voice. Charlie hated him. Rationally he'd expected it; emotionally he might not have been as prepared as he'd thought.

"So it that your plan? Run off and join the Rebels?" He fought to keep the anger out of his voice, to remind himself her response was natural, and that given time and the right methods of persuasion, she would come to see his side.

"My plan was to get my brother back. That's not exactly going well so far." She was evading his question.

"For argument's sake, if you did find your brother, what would you do next?"

"I hadn't really thought that far ahead." This was the second major different he'd seen between Charlie and her mother. The first had been the wanderlust, Charlie's craving for excitement and adventure hadn't been inherited from Rachel, nor learned from Ben. Impulsiveness and short-sightedness had come from the people who raised her either. Those parts of Charlie were all him.

"I used to have that same problem. I remember this one time I went running back in the Pre-Blackout days. I was upset about something and I wanted to run until it was out of my system. I picked a direction and went. No plan. No time limit. I said to myself, '_I'm going to that tree'_. When I'd reach the tree I said, _'I'm going to that mailbox'_. When I reach the mailbox I said, _'I'm going to that street sign'_ and so on and so on.

You'd be amazed how far you can get, tricking yourself like that. Eventually, though, you do get tired. You realize you should probably have turned back a long time ago. You notice that the houses and the street names aren't familiar and you think to yourself, _'How did I get here?'_" How did I get here? Monroe seemed to be asking himself that question more and more lately.

"What did you do?" What had he done? He'd done what he'd always done whenever he screwed up and needed someone to bail him out of trouble.

"I called my best friend and he came and picked me up." Unfortunately the days when Miles would come to save him were long since passed.

"So it all worked out okay." Charlie had apparently missed the point of the story.

"Because I got lucky. You can't rely on someone else to come and save you. If you want to survive, you need to make plans for what you'll do when they don't." This was a lesson Charlie needed to learn as soon as possible. Monroe knew from experience it wasn't an easy one to absorb, but it would make her stronger, and stronger was what she'd need to be in her new life with him.

"It's a little late for that piece of advice." He kept forgetting that Charlie believed this was the end for her. Perhaps he could use that to push her farther towards his side.

"Maybe it's not."

"What do you mean?"

"You could cooperate." Charlie was getting out of this particular cell today, but she did not know that. If he could just convince her to be practical about her situation things could go a lot smoother for her in the future.

"Very funny." Charlie laughed softly and rolled her eyes. She thought he was kidding.

"I'm serious. You must know something, some piece of information you could trade for your life." Charlie narrowed her eyes at him as she read the graveness of his expression. The smile fell off her space.

"Well, I don't. Even if I did, I wouldn't help them. They killed my father. They stole my brother." Monroe sighed. The sting of losing her brother would be lessened when they were reunited, but the wound caused by Ben's death couldn't be alleviated in any way. If Charlie was more selfish this would be a lot easier.

"You shouldn't throw your life away for the sake of vengeance." He had to make her see that there was nothing to be gained by fighting him. Ben wasn't coming back, no matter how much she wished it otherwise. She need to grieve and move on from it or she'd be stuck in the same gilded prison as Rachel for the rest of her life.

"I'm not. My uncle is coming for me." Charlie seemed so certain, it gave Monroe pause.

"You don't know that." Was this all a set up? Had Charlie's capture been a ploy? Was Miles headed to these cells even now?

"Yes, I do. He promised he wouldn't leave me." Monroe felt almost disappointed. There was no planned rescue, just the blind faith of a girl in a relative she barely knew. Monroe remembered a time when he too had trusted absolutely in Miles' loyalty. Charlie was about to experience the same rude awakening he had.

"I hate to be the one to tell you, but Miles doesn't always keep his promises." Charlie's eyes locked on his, an expression of horror and disbelief on her face. Monroe was surprised at his words having so much weight.

"I didn't tell you my uncle's name was Miles'." Monroe watched as Charlie pushed herself to her feet and slowly backed away from him, as though he were a dangerous wild animal she couldn't turn her back on. She knew. He had slipped and she knew. It was over.

"Guard!" Monroe slowly stood up as the corporal he'd stationed at the far end of the cells marched over to stand before him.

"Unlock my cell," the general ordered. The soldier did not hesitate.

"Yes, sir." Keys turned his lock and the door swung open. When he stepped out into the hallway, the guard saluted him. He was General Monroe once more.

"Bring Miss Matheson to her brother," he ordered, then marched toward the exit without one more backward glance. His country needed him. His Charlie Matheson problem could wait.


	15. Miracle

**Sorry it took me so long to update. I had a lot of trouble with this chapter, but hopefully it turned out okay. I'll try to be more prompt in the future. Enjoy!**

Once Rachel had calmed down Bass told her that Ben and her children were waiting back at their campsite. They'd agreed to set off immediately, despite the disappearing daylight.

Rachel hadn't said a word the entire twenty minutes they'd been walking. Bass had been trying to focus on retracing his steps, but it was easier said than done. They had maybe twenty more minutes before twilight became night and reaching their destination would probably take twice that. It wasn't helping that he could feel Rachel's eyes on him the entire time. What was she thinking?

"I thought I was never going to see you again." Rachel's voice broke through Bass' concentration, answering his unspoken question.

"Sorry to disappoint," Bass replied in what he hoped was a suitably light tone. In reality he had no idea whether or not Rachel was sorry to see him again. He'd broken the promise he'd made six years ago. She's seemed happy when he'd first appeared, but then he had been saving her life at the time. Now he was less sure.

"How did you find me?" Bass couldn't help but notice she'd said 'me' not 'us'. It was as though she knew the truth he could barely admit to himself, that with or without Miles he'd had trudged those 940 miles just to catch a glimpse of her again. Why was he even surprised? Of course she knew. She was Rachel.

"I went to your house and I figured you guys must have left for the country. I snagged some photos and I've been flashing them at everyone I stumbled across who hasn't immediately tried to kill me. A few weeks ago I got lucky." Bass shrugged as though the trip had been no more dangerous or exhausting than a stroll around her old neighborhood used to be.

"What about Miles?" Bass could hear the question Rachel didn't want to say out loud. He knew the unspoken assumption whizzing through her brain: if Miles wasn't with Bass, then something had to be terribly wrong. Rachel's instincts were correct, but after what she'd just been through he didn't want to worry her more than he had to. Bass smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

"He's fine, at least physically, for now. He's camped about a week's journey south of here at Willow Slough State Game Preserve. He's the reason I was trying to find you." Rachel arched an eyebrow in an expression so familiar he had to laugh, despite everything, "Well, one of them at any rate. I need Ben's help." Rachel frowned, clearly not expecting that response. He'd managed to surprise, for once.

"Ben? Why?" Bass ran a hand over his overgrown curly hair. He needed to tell her something, but how much would be too much?

"Miles has…changed since the Blackout." At least that sounded better than 'lost his fucking mind.'

"Everyone's changed Bass. Those people were going to EAT ME." Rachel had a point. If someone had told him a year ago he would be rescuing Rachel from a modern day Donner party, he would have said they were nuts.

"They were crazy, Rachel." Rachel needed put those lunatics out of her mind as quickly as she possibly could for the sake of her own sanity.

"They weren't always. That woman she told me she used to run a pet store. She was a vegetarian, before the Blackout. How does a person go from being a vegetarian to a cannibal in less than twelve months? How does that happen?" It was less shocking to Bass than it seemed to be to Rachel, probably because of all the things he'd seen on tour. He'd seen men kill each other over a loaf of bread long before the lights had gone out. Hunger was a powerful motivator.

"It was a cold winter Rachel. People will do some pretty horrific things to survive." Bass tried not to think about those men Miles had killed and the trail of bodies they'd left behind. He tried not to think about Miles himself, about some of the things he'd already done in the name of survival.

"You're right about that. I killed a man today." Rachel's voice was so distant and indifferent she might have been talking about the weather. It occurred to Bass that she could very well be in shock.

"I know." Bass watched Rachel the best he could out of the corner of his eyes while still keeping his focus on the path ahead of them. He didn't know what to make of the stoic mask she wore.

"He was going kill me, and if he found my children he would have killed them, so I shot him." What did she want from him? Comfort? Confirmation that she'd made the correct choice?

"You did the right thing." In Bass' opinion she'd done the only thing she could have. Then again, Bass wasn't exactly a moral authority. Rachel shook her head, dismissing his comment.

"I know. But the worse part isn't that I killed him. The worse part is that I think about what I did, and I feel nothing. I took the life of another human being and I feel nothing. What does that make me?" Rachel stared at him. She was waiting for an answer. Did she honestly think that he of all people would condemn her for not feeling guilty? The man had tried to kill Rachel. Bass felt no sorrow over his passing; he felt a sense of satisfaction.

"A survivor. A mother who protected her children." There was nothing like a threat to a loved one that could bring out a person's inner savage.

"It's not right." Rachel was still holding on to her old notions of right and wrong. Bass agreed with enough of what Miles had been spouting these last months to know that was a mistake.

"Rachel, I'm not sure you noticed, but I dropped three bodies back there, and I guarantee you I'm not going to lose a moment's sleep over it. Do you think that makes me a terrible person?"

"Of course not. You saved me."

"And you saved Charlie and Danny, so stop beating yourself up. You're still you, you just adapted to this Brave New World of ours." Rachel was always harder on herself than she was on anyone else. Bass had to make her see that the man she's killed wasn't worth a moment of her regret.

"Yeah well, I think Ben wishes I hadn't 'adapted' quite so well." Ben? What the hell was she talking about?

"What do you mean?"

"That wasn't the first man I've killed, Bass. He was the third. He probably won't be the last. Do you know how many people Ben's killed? None. The Blackout's changed everything, but not Ben. He doesn't have it in him to take a life, for any reason." So Bass' instincts had been right not to take Ben along on this little rescue mission. That was good to know.

"You think that means he's better than you?" Was Rachel under the impression that because Ben was a die-hard, emphasis on the DIE, pacifist he was somehow superior to her?

"I think it means that in his core he abhors violence and that even though he says he understands what I've done to protect us, he can't accept it. Right after I killed that first man who tried to take our food, I looked at Ben, I looked at his face. In that moment he looked at me like I was a stranger. What if it happens again? What if I get back there and I tell him what I did and he just…" Bass could not believe what he was hearing. Rachel was concerned that her husband, whose life she'd apparently defended on more than one occasion, wouldn't love her anymore because she'd protected herself and her children. For Ben's sake he hoped that this was a delusion of Rachel's guilt-ridden brain.

"Rachel trust me, the only thing that man cares about is that you come home in one piece. He even wanted to play John Wayne and rescue you himself. I convinced him he needed to stay behind for the kids' sake." Bass thought back to Ben's face when he'd left him behind. He remember the look of frustration…and shame. He'd missed it earlier. Whatever Rachel might think Bass had the distinct impression Ben wished he was a little less evolved and a little more able to protect his family.

"Thank you. Ben is more Jimmy Stewart than the Duke." Bass smiled at the comparison. Rachel was right, there were definite similarities between the honest and upright characters the actor played and Ben.

"Yeah he is, lucky bastard." Rachel cocked her head to the side.

"Why do you say that?"

"_The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance_, one of the two movies they co-starred in. It's a classic love triangle, two men in love with the same woman. Wayne does the dirty work and takes out the bad guy and Stewart gets the girl. Never seemed fair to me, but-"

"'Who ever said life was fair? Where is that written?'" After all this time, Rachel hadn't forgotten either.

"Good memory." And a bad one, like all his memories of Rachel.

"Yeah, well, that quote's always stuck with me." Once again the silence filled with the words they weren't saying. Rachel cleared her throat. "Maybe we should stop. When just stumbling around in the dark here. For all we know we're heading the opposite direction of the camp."

"No, we're going the right way. Trust me; I have an excellent sense of direction." To his surprised Rachel snorted at him.

"Like you did on the day your got lost jogging around Miles' neighbor and you had to call him to come pick you up?" Bass wondered briefly how Rachel could possibly have known about his humiliating run, before realizing it could have only come from one source.

"I can't believe the lousy traitor told you that story." The next time Bass saw Miles he would be getting an earful.

"It was my fault. I always used to ask about you when I saw him." Bass looked at Rachel, but her eyes were trained on the ground. Whether she trying to avoid eye contact or tree roots was anyone's guess.

"I used to ask about you too." He was always careful to ask after Ben first, and then Rachel and kids to avoid suspicion. Bass hadn't thought of it as breaking his vow to quit Rachel cold turkey. It was more like a former smoker who carried around a pack of cigarettes, not because he ever intended to smoke again, but because every once in a while he needed the feel of one between his fingers. Some would argue the constant temptation was a mistake, Bass preferred to think of it as a way to test his will power.

"Do you think he ever suspected? About us I mean." Bass had asked himself that question a thousand times. After Rachel got married Miles must have sensed something was wrong. When they'd go out to bars together and Miles would nurse the same beer for hours, watching as Bass did shot after shot. He never asked any questions, he just watched him, drove him home when he thought he had enough, and covered for him with their C.O. when Bass found himself hugging a toilet after an all-night bender. After Charlie's christening Miles had taken him aside and quietly told him that if Bass didn't get his shit together he would throw him in a twelve step program. Little had Miles known that Bass' true addiction had nothing to do with booze.

"I don't think so, but hard to tell with Miles. What about Ben?" Rachel took so long to respond that Bass began to think she hadn't heard his question.

"He knows I had an affair. He doesn't know it was with you." Bass stopped dead in his tracks.

"What?" How could Rachel have told him? What would have possessed her to risk her marriage like that?

"When Charlie was three she fell and she cracked her skull. We had to take her to the hospital. We were both ready to donate, but the doctors said the Charlie's blood type is B. Ben and I, we are both Types As." Bass' brain was buzzed from information overload. What was Rachel saying?

"I don't understand." Rachel's face seemed to suggest the connection should be fairly obvious, but his mind seemed either unable or unwilling to make the leap on its own.

"People with Type A blood have either two A alleles or an A allele and an O allele-" Biology jargon was the last thing he needed right now.

"Speak English! What does that mean?" Rachel took a deep breath.

"It means Ben is not Charlie's biological father." Bass closed his eyes. He'd thought the Blackout was the biggest change to his world he'd see in his lifetime. He'd been wrong.

"So Charlie really is my-" He let his voice trail off. Charlie, the girl who had thrown a rock at his stomach and called him a stranger. Charlie, who taken his hand and trusted him to protect her. Charlie, who had asked him to be careful. Charlie was his daughter.

"Yeah." Bass needed to sit down. He could barely make out the shape of log about twelve feet away. He trudged over and dropped his weigh onto the fallen tree. Rachel followed suit.

"What did you tell Ben?" he asked when he'd finally regained the ability to speak.

"I told him I slept with someone once, right before we got married. I said I was sorry that I'd hurt him, and I promised I'd never do it again." Rachel really was a master of highly selective truth.

"And he was okay with that?" Rachel shook her head at Bass incredulously.

"Of course he wasn't okay with that! He was furious and hurt! I thought he'd ask for a divorce right there in the hospital waiting room." Bass heart leapt in his chest. If Rachel and Ben had divorced things could have been different. If they'd waited, if Bass had been patient then…but what was the point in that line of thought. They obviously hadn't divorced.

"But he didn't."

"No. He said even if he could leave me, he'd never walk out on Charlie and Danny." Of course, Ben loved his children and he clearly considered both of them his children, no matter what the blood test said.

"And he never asked about Charlie's father?"

"He said he didn't want to know. He wanted to move on from it." Lucky for Bass.

"Why didn't you tell me?" It was one thing not to seek out an answer, but when it dropped on her lap, how could she not have told him?

"You said you didn't want to know. Besides, it had been three years. For all I knew you moved on and telling would just mess with your head." As wrong as she was about the first part she was dead on about that last.

"Then why tell me now?" What had changed her mind?

"Because it's the end of the world and I wanted you know that despite everything, I don't regret what we did. Charlie is one of the few good, pure things left in this god-forsaken place. If I had died tonight you never would have known that you were a part of her and that would have been a tragedy. Charlie is a miracle and you deserved to know that you helped make her."

Bass had never made anything, but messes in his entire life. Even as a soldier he didn't create, he destroyed. Now Rachel was telling him that he had helped make a miracle. He had no idea how to respond to that. Unbidden lyrics flew to the Bass mind, words from a song almost forgotten and likely never to be heard again, _Man, you won't believe the most amazing things can come from some terrible nights_.


	16. Not the Bad Guy

Monroe sat at his desk, massaging his temples. It had been a hell of week. The Rebels had attacked three separate supply caravans on their way to the Capital, stealing food and much-needed medicine. The Plains Nation had mounted yet another assault that resulted in the death of over 200 soldiers. To make matters worse Miles and his new friends seemed to have disappeared of the face off the Earth. It was frustrating as hell to have everything he wanted so close and yet just beyond his grasp.

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Monroe smiled, his mood turning lighter at the prospect of his next appointment. Miles would turn up sooner or later. For now he had other matters to attend to.

"Enter." Monroe's door opened and through it walked Charlie Matheson, escorted by one of his guards. The girl was still wearing her old clothes, despite the fact he'd ordered his men to provide her with three new outfits. He smirked at the gesture of defiance. He expected no less from her.

"Good to see you again, Charlie. I hope your new accommodations are satisfactory?" Monroe had put Charlie in a large suite with her brother that was a hundred times bigger than her prison cell and considerably more comfortable. Judging by the glare she was shooting him, her luxurious new abode wasn't winning him any points with her.

Monroe picked up a scroll of paper from his desk and gestured the guard to approach.

"See that this gets delivered to Captain Bishop right away," he said, placing the note in the soldier's hands. The young private saluted and rushed out of the room, leaving the general alone with Charlie.

"So, Charlie…would you like a drink?" Monroe stood up, walked over to his liquor table, and poured Scotch into two glasses tumblers. He raised one to Charlie and when she didn't move to take it, he shrugged and raised the glass to his own lips. The liquor burned pleasantly as it ran down his throat. When he finished he smiled at Charlie.

"You're angry with me. I get it. You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to. There were just a few things I'd like to say to you. I want to apologize. You've had to give up a lot for the sake of the Republic. I'm sorry you're caught in the middle of this war, and I'm sorry for the suffering it's caused you." Charlie's lips tightened in anger. He could see the struggle in her eyes, trying to decide between continuing with her silent treatment and giving him a tongue lashing. At last she opened her mouth. Tongue lashing it was.

"You're sorry? You killed my father, kidnapped and tortured my brother, held my mother captive for years, while I thought she was dead. Sorry doesn't cover it." Her eyes were hard, very different from the eyes that had looked at him in that cell.

"I never wanted any of that to happen. It was beyond my control." Even if Charlie couldn't forgive him for the things he'd done, it was important to him that she understand that hurting her had never been his intention.

"You're General Monroe. You run this so-called Republic. Nothing is beyond your control." The general laughed humorlessly. Charlie couldn't have been more wrong. He had power, but he was also burdened with the responsibility that went with that power.

"On the contrary, being General ties my hands in ways you can't possibly imagine. I have to make choices every day for the good of my country. Just because I can't allow my personal feelings to interfere with my duty to my country, doesn't mean I don't have them. Ben and Rachel were both my friends once upon a time. We were friends once too, if only for a brief time. Do you remember?" Monroe opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a worn photograph. He walked over to Charlie and placed the picture in her hand. Her eyebrows knit in confusion as she looked back and forth between the general and the photograph.

"Uncle Fishy?" Charlie whispered in seeming disbelief. He could tell she was struggling to reconcile the man she'd met all those years ago with the man he was now.

"There's a nickname I haven't heard in a while." On the positive side, Charlie hadn't forgotten their time together. Now that his identity was no longer a secret, her recollections could work in his favor.

"That's why you were so familiar. Why are telling me all this?" For the first time since she'd stepped into his office, Charlie seemed unsure of herself. His revelations were making it harder for her to find a solid footing, which was exactly what he wanted.

"To remind you that we weren't always enemies and we don't have to be now. I know you think I'm some kind of monster, but the truth isn't quite that simple. Come here, I want you to see something." The general gestured to the table in the center of the room. Charlie warily approached it , the old photograph still in her hand. Monroe pointed to the paper that occupied the majority of the wooden surface.

"This is a map of North America as it exists today. Have you ever seen one of these before?"

"No." Monroe wasn't surprised. Charlie lived in a secluded village for most of her life that didn't see many outsiders. She probably knew very little about the threats that lured outside the borders of the Republic. It was about time she had a geo-politics lesson. He pointed to their country on the map.

"Here is the Monroe Republic. We are home to approximately three million people. To the south we've got the Georgia Federation. With six million people, they out number us two to one. Georgia, though doesn't worry me nearly as much Plains Nations. They are savages, Charlie. When they conquer a village, they show no mercy. The civilian men are slaughtered, the women are raped, and the children are shipped to the re-education camps." If he could make Charlie understand the dangers the Republic faced, perhaps she could understand why he'd made the decisions he had. When Charlie tore her eyes away from the map to look at him however, he could see his hope was in vain.

"You killed my father, an unarmed civilian. You take women from their villages, sell them into prostitution and you call it a tax. You kidnap sixteen year old boys and brainwash them into becoming soldiers. You say these people are savages, and maybe they are, but how are you any better?" Those weren't fair comparisons. He could and would debate her, point by point.

"One: Your father was an accident. I NEVER meant for him to die. Two: I recruit young men and women, not children, to serve their country in times of war. It is called being drafted. They even had it back before the lights went out." He was not the bad guy, no matter what Charlie thought, he was just a man trying to keep a young nation from falling apart.

"What about the women? How do you explain that away?" Monroe's answer was interrupted by a knock on his door. One thing Monroe could say for Captain Bishop: he had perfect timing.

"I'm not. He is. Come in!" Captain Bishop marched through the doors and saluted.

"General Monroe, Sir!" The man seemed to be holding his breath while he tried to evaluate Monroe's mood. The general smiled warmly at him.

"At ease Captain. Would you care for a drink? I already poured a spare." Monroe indicated the second glass he'd left sitting on the table to the left of his desk.

"Thank you, Sir." Captain Bishop hesitantly walked over to retrieve the tumbler, all the while keeping his eyes on Monroe. It was as those he was concerned the invitation to drink would soon be rescinded. Bishop saluted the general with his glass, Monroe did the same, and they both drank. After Bishop lowered his glass, his eyes found Charlie for the first time.

"Where are my manners? Captain Bishop, this is Miss Charlie Matheson. Miss Matheson,this is Captain Bishop." The captain's gaze passed over every inch of Charlie, from her long legs to her slim waist to her sparking blue eyes. Monroe's grip tightened on his glass, but his smile didn't falter.

"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Matheson." Bishop approached the girl, heedless of the cold fury radiating from her entire being. Did he really not notice the slight crease between her brows, and the flare of her nostrils? Was he too distracted by the gentle curves of her figure or did he simply not care?

The captain extended a hand, clearly expecting Charlie to offer her own in return. Charlie remained still as a statue, staring at the offered limb like it was a snake. Monroe cleared his throat, turning the Captain's attention back on him.

"You'll have to forgive Miss Matheson, she's new to the Capital, and her manners are still a bit rustic." Bishop chuckled and Charlie's glare told him quite plainly that she wished him dead where he stood.

"Of course, Sir." He shot Charlie one last leer before turning the whole of his focus on Monroe.

"The reason I called you in here, Captain, is that Miss Matheson have been having a discussion about a civilian's perception of the Militia. You've interacted with far more civilians than I have these past few years , so I was hoping you could tell me: What do people outside the Militia think of us?" The captain's flickered to Charlie and back to Monroe, unease seeping back into his features.

"More or less the same as the civilians of any country would I except. They grumble about us when it's time to pay taxes, but they appreciate the safety and stability we provide." Charlie snorted in disbelief, but both men ignored her.

"What about the Rebels?" asked Monroe, once again redirecting the captain's attention, "They don't seem to appreciate the safety and stability all that much." That had to be one of the biggest understatements he'd ever made. Despite everything the Militia sacrificed to keep the people of this nation safe, after everything Monroe had sacrificed, the Rebels continued to attack them, burdening them with an enemy from within as well as without.

"A handful malcontent extremists. We'll stamp them out soon enough." How many times had Monroe himself thought the very same thing, and yet he here was almost ten years later, still fighting the same damn battle. Hundreds dead, and yet they just kept coming back for more. Monroe sometimes felt like he was playing the world's bloodiest game of Whack-A-Mole. Sympathy for their movement grew every day. Kids Charlie age and younger continued to sign on to be slaughtered for the fantasy of a country they don't even remember. He used to think it was madness, but now he knew better.

"That's what I used to think, but it seems no matter how many we kill, more seem to spring up in their place. It drove me crazy until I realized that I was attacking the problem all wrong. I was thinking of the Rebels like they were a disease I could eradicate and be done with, but they are not a disease, they are a symptom. You can manage a symptom, but it won't go away until you fix the underlying problem. " Ironically Monroe owed his epiphany to a Rebel. 'People aren't happy. They're scared to death of you. But I'm not.' Monroe had looked into that man's eyes and he hadn't seen madness. The general had seen pain, and fear, and in those final moments, courage and resolve.

As Monroe had stabbed the Rebel it had occurred to him the man may have been telling the truth. The man he'd killed hadn't been an embittered soldier from a militia he'd destroyed, or a raving lunatic. He'd been an ordinary man, up until the moment he became a Rebel. The question was: What flipped the switch? What turned an ordinary man into a terrorist? It was a question worth considering.

"What's the problem, Sir?" Monroe blinked and refocused on Captain Bishop.

"The problem, Captain, is that most people hate us. The civilians are no happier than the Rebels, they are just too scared come after us. It's very frustrating, because some of the things they hate us for, like collecting crops as a yearly tax, can't be helped. You'd agree wouldn't you, Captain? You've had tax collecting duty for some years now?" The captain slowly nodded his head.

"As you say, those crops are essential. They keep our soldiers fed so we can police our cities and defend our borders." Monroe was in complete agreement with Bishop's assessment. It was a fair exchange of goods for services rendered, not theft, whatever Charlie thought.

"I never thought of it as being particularly unreasonable. They are paying us to keep them safe. We don't ask them for more than they can afford to spare, which was why I was so surprised to hear from Charlie how resentful some villagers can be. It's not like I'm asking for their kidneys." Monroe laughed and took another sip of Scotch.

"No, Sir." Captain Bishop really was quite the good little yes-man, wasn't he. Monroe picked up the decanter and carried it over to his subordinate.

"Or their first born babies." He topped off the Captain's glass and set the remainder of the Scotch on the table.

"No, Sir." Bishop gave Monroe a smirk of his own and took another drink.

"Or their women." Monroe paused and let his words sink in. Bishop froze, mid-swallow, his eyes suddenly filled with panic. "I'd never ask them for their women. But apparently you do, in my name."

"General, I never-!" Quick as a lightning flash, Monroe's hand shot out and grabbed Captain Bishop by the throat, effectively cutting off his lies.

"Spare me your denials. I've already spoken to your unit. It turns out they're still more loyal to me than to you. The moment I told them your actions had been completely unsanctioned they all turned on you. I tracked down the cat house you've been selling to. The women you victimized are on their way home as we speak with a full Militia escort and monetary compensation for what they've endured, although I very much doubt any amount of money will make up for what they've gone through." Monroe felt no pity for the soldier struggling to breathe. This man had disgraced his uniform and everything it stood for. The Republic had been founded to protect those who could not protect themselves. It stood for law and order, which was sometimes harsh, but never wantonly cruel. It was meant to benefit the common good, not the greed of any one man.

"You and half of the Militia keep the whorehouses of Philly in business," rasped Bishop. Monroe wouldn't dispute that he and many of his men frequented cat houses. Sex was a commodity and the general had more pressing concerns than regulating how private citizens chose to earn their livings. As General Monroe he could probably have his pick of willing women, but he preferred prostitutes. It was simpler, keeping things as a business transaction. They got money and he got a few hours of distraction. There was no mess afterward, no unexpected cost. He had learned his lesson. Still there was a world of difference between engaging the services of a woman in the sex trade and forcing her into it.

"The difference is that those women made a choice to be there. The women you sold did not make that choice. Prostitution is legal in the Republic, but slave trading is not."

"You're making a mistake. I could help garner revenue for the Republic. I know we're always in need of funds. I have the contacts, I know what type of women are worth the most! That girl right there for instance! Do you have any idea what she'd be worth-" Monroe found himself squeezing Bishop's throat before he knew what he was doing. All it would take was a quick jerk and the man's neck would snap. After hearing him size up Charlie like a valuable piece of horseflesh, he was sorely tempted.

"The reason we deal in crops and not human beings, apart from the fact that it is disgusting, is that all people have tipping points. Certain things cause a person to become so enraged that they lose all sense of self-preservation. Watching your wife or your daughter or your niece get dragged off to be sold into prostitution, is just the type of thing that turns a man from a civilian into a Rebel.

What you have done isn't just criminal, it is treasonous. Your actions have fueled the Rebellion and thus endangered the Republic. Guards!" The two men he'd ordered on standby instantly appeared, "Escort Former Captain Bishop to the cells and inform the barracks I've scheduled a public execution tomorrow at which their attendance is required." Monroe relinquished his hold on Bishop's neck and watched him drop to the floor. The soldiers hoisted the captain up and dragged him from the room.

"What just happened?" Monroe turned to Charlie, who was staring at him, wide-eyed and bewildered. He picked up his glass and drained it of its contents before answering.

"Captain Bishop will be executed tomorrow on the crime of Treason. I can arrange for you to attend if you'd like." Charlie might have been hesitant to trust his word after his performance in the cells, so Monroe assumed she would like proof that the exchange he'd just witnessed was legitimate.

"There's not going to be a trial?" Monroe raised an eyebrow, at Charlie's question.

"There's no point. He's guilty. Even he didn't deny it."

"So that's it, he dies." The general was surprised at Charlie's lack of enthusiasm. Seven days ago she'd been fuming about the crimes this man had perpetrated, and now she seemed disturbed that justice had been carried out so swiftly.

"That's the punishment for Treason, Charlie. You said you believed in people paying for their crimes. A public execution ensures that your village and other villages like yours will be safe, not just from Captain Bishop, but from anyone else who might have tried a similar scam." The soldiers would be reminded they were not above the laws they enforced.

"Am I supposed to thank you?" Monroe considered the question, then shook his head.

"Not at all. In fact I should thank you. If you hadn't brought Captain Bishop's crime to my attention, he'd had continued abusing the citizens of my nation and creating more bad blood which is the last thing our country needs right now. I am in your debt." He flashed Charlie his most charming smile, but the girl seemed unmoved.

"I don't suppose that means you'll let me go." Monroe allowed himself a small chuckle. He had to hand it to her, she had spunk.

"I would Charlie, but I know you well enough to know that you'd never leave here without your brother and mother, who I'm afraid I can't release." The Republic needed Danny and Rachel, and since Charlie Matheson wasn't the type to abandon her family, she would remain here as his heavily guarded guest indefinitely. It would take some getting used on both of their ends, but Monroe was confident that eventually they would reach a mutual understanding.

"Fine. Then in exchange would you answer some questions for me?" It seemed like a harmless enough request, but it seemed safer to offer a qualified yes.

"You can ask as many questions as you would like and I will answer all that I can."

"And you'll tell the truth?" Monroe wasn't offended by the question, given their recent history.

"Some I might choose not to answer, but I promise I won't lie."

"The soldier who captured me, he called himself 'Nate', he was injured. Do you know if he's okay?" She must have been referring to Lieutenant Neville. Interesting that she was asking after his well-being. Perhaps the young soldier's crush wasn't one-sided after all. Monroe thought back to what Captain Neville had told him the day Charlie had been captured. Tom hadn't offered many specifics and Monroe had been preoccupied with more important things.

"I'm not sure. He was in the hospital last week, but I don't know how he's progressing. I could find out, if you'd like." Charlie nodded, her face unreadable.

"Yes." Charlie's mouth opened and closed, no doubt forcing herself to swallow the 'thank you' her upbringing had made a force of habit. She took a deep breath and continued. " Did Miles know that my mother was alive?" The words came out in such a rush Monroe almost didn't understand them. Now it was his turn to pause. Although Charlie didn't know it, they were heading into some dangerous territory. Still she had asked, and he'd promised to be as truthful as he could be.

"No. I lied to him seven years ago, and told him that she died." Miles had been upset when Monroe had rallied the news, more than upset, but he'd be so angry at the time, he hadn't cared. Miles' drinking had gotten heavier after that. They'd both done terrible things to protect what they'd built, but Rachel 'death' was the one sin Miles hadn't been able to shake.

"Why? Why lie to him? I thought he was your best friend." Perhaps it would have been better if he HAD told Miles the truth. Without the weight of that one burden, Miles might not have broken. Miles might have still been here with him. Charlie was still staring at him, waiting for a response.

"He was. I was protecting her." Confusion once again fell over Charlie's face. Under the current circumstances his response DID seem improbable.

"From what?" If she didn't believe the first part of his answer, she definitely wouldn't believe the second part.

"From Miles. Next question." He didn't want to revisit that memory as any more than he had to.

"But-"

"Next question." The firmness of his tone seemed to convince Charlie to abandon her current tact. She studied his face and bit her lip. He sensed that whatever she was about to ask, she wasn't certain she wanted the answer to. After ten second of deliberation, she finally spoke.

"What do you want from me?" She was direct, he'd give her that, and so like her mother.

"What makes you think I want anything from you?"

"Because I heard Nate, or whatever his name is when they captured me, saying that orders were to bring me in unharmed. The orders not to kill Miles made sense; you think he knows something about the power." It was the excuse he'd always given Jeremy when he asked about the standing orders to bring Miles in alive. Deep down, though Monroe had always known it had been just that, an excuse.

"Perhaps I thought you have information." Charlie slowly shook her head.

"I thought of that, but now you know that I don't. You also don't need me to force my mother to help you, because you have Danny, so why am I here in your office, rather than dead or rotting away in one of your prison cells?" What rationale could he concoct that would satisfy Charlie? To quote an old movie, she couldn't handle the truth.

"Would you prefer to be?" He was stalling for time. Taking the 5th would seem incriminating and he'd sworn to answer honestly.

"I'd prefer to know what the hell was going on, so I'll ask again, what do you want?" Screw it, he would tell the truth, albeit the abridged and over-simplified version.

"The same thing I've always wanted since the day you were born. I want you to be safe and happy." Charlie stared at him incredulously with her piercing blue eyes. Would he ever get over the disconcerting feeling of looking into a near replica of his own eyes? Their shape was slightly different, but there was no mistaking that color blue.

"May I go back to my room now?" Monroe could tell that the polite request was causing her teeth to grind. She must have been anxious to get back to her brother if she was making the attempt to be civil. This seemed as good a spot as any to conclude their interview.

"As you wish." Monroe smiled briefly at the turn of phrase that had slipped off his tongue before summoning yet another guard. "Please escort Ms. Matheson back to her suite. Good night, Charlie."

Twenty minutes after Charlie's departure Monroe heard yet another rap at the door. He seemed to be particular popular this evening.

"Come in." He was surprised to see Tom Neville hurrying though the door. They hadn't had an appointment to the best of his recollection, and given their last encounter Monroe wasn't entirely thrilled to see him. Neville's gloved hands held a tightly rolled scroll of paper, bound with a ragged piece of hemp. He offered it to Monroe.

"General. This just arrived for you. I wanted to deliver it myself. It's from Miles." Monroe's eyes flashed to Neville's for confirmation of what he'd just heard. Neville's face was as serious as an undertaker's. Monroe read and reread the names scribbled across the outside of the tube. The handwriting was definitely a match. After not hearing from Miles for three years, it was all Monroe could do to not rip the letter from Neville's hands. He forced himself to take steady even breaths. He couldn't afford to get emotional about this. "Perhaps I should open it, Sir." He looked up sharply at Neville as plucked the paper from his grasp.

"I appreciate the thought, but I doubt even Miles could have gotten his hands on Anthrax." Despite his quip, he had to fight to keep his hands from shaking as he cut the hemp and unrolled the letter. Monroe read and re-read the letter a dozen times, all seven words of it.

_**Parley. Tomorrow night, same time, same place. **_

There was no salutations, hell, there wasn't even a complete sentence. Three years of silence broken with a series of written grunts. Damn, he'd missed Miles.

"Well?" Tom was obviously curious about the contents of the note, but Monroe wasn't inclined to share the details at present.

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with. You may go." The Captain forced a smile and reluctantly accepted his dismissal. He was at the door before Monroe remembered Charlie's request. "Oh Tom, before I forget, how is your son doing?" Neville stopped and turned, seemingly taken aback at the question.

"As well as can be expected. He won't have full use of his arm for some time, but the doctors say he should make a full recovery. The bolt missed anything vital. Jason's lucky the Matheson girl is a terrible shot." It was Monroe's turn to be surprised.

"Charlie shot him?" That certainly put a new perspective on her inquiring after his heath. Would she be disappointed to learn she hadn't finished him off? Once again he found himself empathizing with Neville's son. Having feelings for a Matheson woman was a dangerous business, "Like mother, like daughter I suppose. You're dismissed." Neville left and Monroe's mind turned back to Miles, specifically his request for parley.

Miles had left the note vague, no doubt taking precautions against ambitious underlings intercepting the communication and trying to proof themselves heroes by crashing the meet. Miles always did know how to think ahead. Only Monroe would know that Miles was referring to the spot they used to sneak out to at midnight to drink and let loose the way they couldn't as the founders of the Monroe Republic. The terms of the parley were simple: come alone and unarmed. The question was, what was Miles planning?

Given Ben's death and the company Miles had been keeping lately, Monroe doubted he was in for an abject apology and a plea to be taken in from the cold. What did he want? Was he here to kill him? Was this parlay merely a trick to lure Monroe out into the open, so he could finish what he started three years ago? With the fresh tragedy of his brother's death Monroe had to concede it was possible.

There was of course, an alternative possibility. 'He promised he wouldn't leave me,' Charlie had said. Monroe had thought that the girl was being naïve; after all if Miles could walk away from Monroe, then he could walk away from anyone, but maybe she hadn't been.

Charlie's mission to rescue her brother had always been insane, yet Miles had joined her. He had probably had multiple opportunities to walk away, but instead he had marched his twenty year old niece 1000 miles, right into the heart of the Republic. Why? Because Charlie was the embodiment of Miles' redemption. The child, at least he believed, of his dead brother and sister-in-law, offering the promise of redemption in the form of a quixotic crusade.

If Charlie was the reason Miles wanted to meet, it gave Monroe some leverage. As long as Charlie had value to Miles, Monroe could be assured of his safety, even if he went alone. No, an ambush wasn't in Miles' best interest, but was it in Monroe's? Miles would be scouting the area long before Monroe arrived and he had a knack for smelling traps. Monroe nodded to himself, having decided on a rational and objective course of action. He was going to see Miles again.


	17. Over a Cliff

Charlie was watching them again. Rachel had tucked both kids into their sleeping bags thirty minutes ago, but the girl had not yet fallen asleep. She kept peeking over at where he, Ben, and Rachel sat around the fire.

Bass locked gazes with his biological daughter, and smiled. Charlie, realizing she'd been caught, quickly squeezed her eyes shut. Bass decided there was no point in telling Ben and Rachel about Charlie's spying. He couldn't blame her for wanting to stay as informed as possible. If he were Charlie, he wouldn't want to take his eyes off his parents either.

Danny was young enough not to have fully understood what had nearly happened to his mother, but Charlie knew. When he and Rachel had emerged from the forest she had launched herself at her mother like a small blonde rocket. Charlie's thin arms had wrapped around Rachel, and despite her mother's attempts to laugh off the experience, Charlie had clung tight. Ben and Danny had joined in on the embrace, leaving Bass to stand awkwardly off to the side. He knew he shouldn't intrude on the private family moment, but he couldn't bring himself to look away.

For a brief moment Bass had re-imagined the scene as it would look if he were standing in Ben's place. He'd supposed if he were standing there, Danny wouldn't have been. Charlie wouldn't have the brother she clearly adored by her side. Maybe in Danny's place there would have been another child, maybe a son, or maybe a second daughter.

Bass' musings had been interrupted by Ben, who broke away from the group. The older man had walked over to him, tears in his eyes and pulled Bass into a bear hug that was even tighter than the one Bass had received when he first arrived. Ben's gesture had immediately made Bass feel guilty about his self-indulgent fantasies. As Ben had hugged him, Bass's gaze had fallen on Charlie. She had been looking at him with a strange expression on her face.

All through dinner she hadn't say a word to him and Bass had no idea how to start a conversation with a seven year old. He had caught her staring at him a few more times, but every time he'd turned to her, she'd looked away. Bass didn't know what to make of it, given how outgoing she'd been earlier, but he be the first to admit he didn't know the first thing about kids.

Bass shook his head slightly and turned his attention to Ben. He had spent the past five minutes explaining, as delicately as he possibly could, that Miles had gone a little nuts and that he needed Ben's help to snap him out of it.

"So, will you come with me?" Ben didn't reply immediately, instead he just stared into the fire. This wasn't the exact reaction Bass had been hoping for. He expected Ben to jump up and insist that they departed immediately, despite it being the middle of the night. Bass couldn't understand why Ben was being so pensive. Miles was in trouble and Ben was his brother. What was there to think about?

"No." For a moment Bass was certain he had misheard.

"No?" he repeated incredulously. Bass had left Miles alone for months to track Ben down, only for Ben to refuse to leave?

"It wouldn't do any good. If he didn't listen to you, he's not going to listen to me." Bass couldn't believe he was getting this from Ben, of all people. Ben was the one who'd insisted on home cooked meals during the holidays, and phoning regularly. Ben believed in family ,or at least he used to.

"You're his brother, his blood. He came all the way from South Carolina to find you." Miles had traveled ten hundred miles to find Ben, but Ben couldn't be bothered to go eighty to preserve his brother's sanity?

"And yet he's not here." What was this? Did Ben really have the nerve to be angry about the fact Miles had allowed himself to get sidetracked during the last leg of the journey?

"He walked through a 1000 miles of hell to see if you were safe and you're pissed that he stumbled a little at the finish line?!" Rachel, who'd been sitting quietly until that point, shot him a hard look.

"Lower your voice before you wake the kids." Bass took a deep breath in an effort to control his temper. Rachel was right, Charlie'd had enough stress today without watching him and Ben fight.

"Bass, if I believed there was the smallest chance that I could reach Miles, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but there's not." Ben sounded so certain that it gave Bass pause.

"What makes you so sure?" Did Ben know something that Bass didn't?

"History." Ben sighed and resumed staring into the fire. "Miles has only ever needed two things to be happy. The first is you. The second is a mission. He needs a cause to fight for. That was the United States, but once the Blackout hit there was no more United States." Bass thought back to day Miles had told him he wanted to join the Marines. When Bass had asked why, all Miles would say was that it was something he needed to do. Bass had never pushed further than that. Miles was family, and whatever Miles needed, Bass would make sure he got.

"Miles needed a new mission," Ben continued, "So he decided to find his family. The problem was that on the way to us, he saw how brutal the world has become. Suddenly the old mission of finding us was too small scale. This crusade to restore order to the world it has the potential to last him for years. I wouldn't be able to talk him out of what he's planning any more than I could stop him from joining the Marines. If anyone's going to stop him, it's going to have to be you." Could Ben be right? Was Miles really addicted to fighting the good fight and if so, what could Bass do about it?

"I tried to talk him out of this. He wouldn't listen to me." What could he do that he hadn't already done? Ben turned and looked at him hard.

"Raise the stakes. Make him chose, you or his mission." If Ben's face hadn't been so dead serious, Bass would have assumed he was joking. Leave Miles? It was unthinkable.

"Miles would know I was bluffing." Monroe's hand unconsciously went to his tattoo. Monroe and Matheson, united always and forever. Miles would never take the empty threat seriously. He knew Bass would be nothing with him.

"Then don't bluff. If he refuses, come back to us. When Miles realizes how serious you are, he'll follow." Ben made it sound so simple, so easy, but it was anything but.

"And if he doesn't?" Living without Miles was his worst nightmare. Even in the few months he'd been searching for the Mathesons by himself had been torture. It felt like half of him was missing. Could Ben guarantee that he wouldn't have to live through that for the rest of his life?

"Then he's not Miles anymore, because the Miles I know would never choose anything or anyone over you." Ben patted Bass' shoulder and then stood. "It's been a long day. I'm going to turn in. Rachel, are you coming to bed?"

"In a minute." Ben nodded and yawned.

"Good night, Bass." When Ben was out of earshot, Bass turned to Rachel.

"What do you think?" She'd been unusually quiet during his exchange with Ben and he wanted her opinion. Rachel tended to have a clearer perspective on things than he did.

"I think Ben's right. Make him choose. If he doesn't pick you, then he's too far gone. He's not your best friend anymore." That was easy for Rachel to say. She didn't love Miles like he did. You don't give up on the people you love, not matter how they change, no matter what happens.

"I can't abandon him Rachel." After everything he sacrificed to keep Miles, he'd be damned if he gave him up now. Rachel sighed and rubbed the exhaustion from her eyes.

"Did ever consider that not standing up to him is the greater betrayal? You said you were afraid he'd lose himself. If you don't try to stop him you aren't protecting him from the greatest threat he's ever faced. You aren't protecting him from himself." Bass had no answer for her. To Bass loyalty had always meant being willing to follow someone over a cliff. Maybe Rachel was right and what it meant was stopping the other person from jumping off in the first place.

Rachel shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. "Don't stay up too late." Bass noticed she didn't bother to wish him a good night's sleep. She knew him well enough to know he'd toss and turn, thinking about all of the things he'd experienced in the past 6 hours.

Bass watched the flickering tongues of flame dance as he recounted his recent memories. Finding Charlie and Danny in the woods. Reuniting with Ben. Rescuing Rachel from cannibals. Learning Charlie was his daughter. Being told he should leave his best friend. Ben was right; it had been a long day.


	18. Parley

The full moon's light flittered through the branches of the trees, dimly lighting the familiar clearing. Bass felt strange being back in civilian clothes for the second time in a week. He had a knife concealed in his boot, but otherwise he had met the stipulations of the parley. He'd come alone and not a single soul on earth knew where he was. It was simultaneously freeing and frightening.

If this was an assassination attempt, then it would likely be days before anyone found his body. Monroe's heart beat at a slightly elevated rate. His battle instincts screamed that he was making a fatal mistake, but he ignored them. It was a risk, but it was worth taking if it brought him face to face with Miles again. There wasn't a whisper of sound beyond the general chirps and rustles of the woods, and yet he sensed a presence concealed beneath the night's cloak.

"Miles, I have a country to run in the morning. Could we move this along?" Three heartbeats passed before a familiar figure emerged from the shadows. Bass fought to keep his face blank. Miles. His hair was longer than Bass remembered, and his black uniform was long gone, but it was him, in the flesh, after three long years.

Bass was amazed to discover that his first gut reaction wasn't anger, but joy. The way things had ended between them didn't matter. His three-year absence didn't matter. His recent alignment with Monroe's enemies didn't matter. Miles had come home.

"Had to be sure you came alone." Miles' voice was gruff, but Bass could hear some kind of emotion behind those words. He'd be damned if he knew what exactly.

"And unarmed. I remember the rules of parley." Bass spread his arms and showed Miles his hands, palm-first.

"It wasn't your memory I doubted." Bass felt a stab of annoyance at Miles' jab at his integrity, conveniently forgetting about the concealed weapon in his boot.

"I have more of a right to be suspicious than you, given that the last time you paid me a visit, you put a gun to my head. I should just mention, in case you planning a repeat performance, that I've given my guards very specific instructions involving your niece and nephew should I not be back at the main gates within the hour." This was actually a bluff. Bass' instructions to the very confused guard had been not to mention his foray beyond the base to anyone. He'd told the kid that he was on top-secret Republic business and the he should sound the alarm if he didn't return alone by the next shift change.

"I figured as much, which is why this is a negotiation, not an ambush." Once again Bass felt a flare of anger, this time at Miles' business-like demeanor. He hadn't expected this cool, impersonal conversation. He'd expected a fight. He expected to yell at Miles and yelled at in return. He expected a release for the anger that had been building up inside him for three years. If they could both just air grievances, then maybe they could finally start making amends to each other. They could repair their bond and move forward together. Clearly Miles had a different idea.

"A negotiation? What is it that you think you have to bargain with?" Was Miles about to offer him the pendant? Could he really be that lucky?

"Me." Apparently not.

"And what makes you think you have any value to me?" If Miles wanted to act like strangers, then so be it. Bass could play the heartless dictator. He'd had plenty of experience with the role.

"The fact that you've been hunting me for the past three years. Maybe you think I know something about the power. Maybe you want see me publicly executed for turning against you. I don't you well enough anymore to know why you want me, but I do know you want me." Miles' words felt like a punch to the gut. Miles didn't know him? If anyone had changed beyond recognition it wasn't Bass, it was Miles.

"And in exchange for what exactly?" What trade did he hope to make? What was his endgame here?

"You letting my niece and nephew go back to their village and never bothering them again." Of course that's what he wanted. The fallen hero redeemed by liberating his brother's children from the grasp of the evil tyrant. All Miles needed was white Stetson and horse.

"Two for one? That hardly seems fair."

"No, what's not fair is you dragging them in the middle of this. They've suffered enough already and they have no value to you. Let them go." Miles was making his offer based on bad information. According to Charlie, Miles believed Danny was bait to lure Miles out of hiding. He had no idea how important the boy was to the Republic.

"No." Miles' eyebrows pinched in confusion. He clearly hadn't expected to be turned down. Monroe got a perverse satisfaction from denying the ex-general something he wanted. It was petty and beneath him as President of the Republic, but there it was.

"No? Why the hell not?" Telling Miles about Rachel was out of the question, but fortunately Bass had supplemental reasons for wanting the Mathesons kept just where they were.

"If I let those kids go after everything that's happened, do you really think they're going to settle down in some quiet little village and grow lettuce for the rest of their lives? They'd run straight to the nearest Rebel encampment and enlist." That could be a very bad thing, for Charlie and Danny as well as Monroe.

"And so what if they do? You think a couple of kids are going to turn the tide of the Rebellion?" Miles had apparently forgotten just how their Militia got started in the first place.

"I don't underestimate the power of a good story." Stories were important. Back when militia groups started popping up like tuffs of crab grass, it was a story that drew men to enlist with Monroe-Matheson._ Two former marines crossing the countryside, rescuing the helpless and restoring order to the world._ Jeremy and dozens of others like him each circulated their tales until Bass and Miles has become genuine modern day folk heroes. The story gave ordinary men something to believe in, something to fight for. It seemed like a small thing, but it wasn't not in a world where hope and dreams were all but extinct.

"What are you talking about?"

"These aren't some random kids who are pissed because they had to turn over 10 percent of their yearly crop to the Republic. Their story is by far more compelling. _Two young adults, orphaned by the Militia. The younger brother is taken into custody. The big sister vows to get him back. She enlists the help of her Uncle, who is none other than former General Matheson, on her quest. Together they travel a thousand miles facing dangers untold, blowing up bridges, and trains, and liberating young recruits from conscription ships_. It reads like a classic tale of good vs. evil. A story like that inspires people. A story like that is dangerous." The Mathesons, with their tale of heroism and familial love, were the ultimate Rebel recruiting tool.

Monroe had noticed that Charlie in particular had a kind of magnetism. She had the ability to draw people towards her, to make them listen to what she said. He wasn't the only one who'd felt it. Miles obviously had, as well as Jason Neville. Charlie probably didn't even realize what a potent weapon she possessed. He only hoped she never had the opportunity to find out.

"You think those kids are capable of making more trouble for you than I could?" Bass studied Miles, seriously considering his question. The moonlight illuminating his old friend's face highlighted his tired features. The years they'd been apart clearly hadn't been rejuvenating. It wasn't that surprising, considered that Lieutenant Neville had found Miles hiding out in a bar.

"Before Charlie came to find you, you were nothing but a sad, washed-up, ex-soldier trying to drink himself to death. Now that she's gone, now that you FAILED again, I give you a couple of months before you completely self-destruct." Miles had given up once before and he'd probably do it again once he accepted there was no way he'd succeed in completing his mission.

"The way I hear it, you're pretty close to the edge yourself. Tell me: how's your head resting on the pillow these days, knowing that everyone who ever loved you either hates you or is dead at your hand?" The remark hit far too close to home for Bass' comfort. He forced a smile to hide the sting.

"I sleep just fine. I'm not the one who betrayed my best friend and my country. You think running away from all this makes you less guilty than me? You think helping Charlie with her suicidal vendetta makes you some kind of hero? If you really wanted to do right by her, you'd have sent her home." Bass was glad that he finally have the opportunity to chew out Miles for endangering Charlie the way he had.

"What home Bass? Her brother is a prisoner and her parents are dead because of you!" It was the 'you' that made Bass finally lose his grip on his temper.

"Because of US! You don't get to put all of this on me. This whole damn thing wasn't even my idea, IT WAS YOURS. At first I thought you were nuts, but stood by you. No matter how ugly things got I never abandoned you like you abandoned me. Why did you do it?" Bass was ashamed to say his voice cracked a little on the final sentence, but his confusion and hurt could no long be contained. For three years the question had been rattling around in his head, and he finally had the chance to get his answer.

"There was too much blood, Bass." Miles voice sounded a little choked as well. That was some consolation, he supposed that Miles wasn't as unaffected as he pretended to be.

"We were at war Miles. There are always causalities." Miles was a soldier, he should have understood that.

"We went too far." Too far? Who the hell was Miles to unilaterally decide what too far was? They were a team. If Miles had objections or crises of conscience, there were other ways he could have dealt with it than planning a god-damn coup.

"And you thought killing me was going to fix everything? If you had managed to pull the trigger, what exactly were you going do? Declare democracy? Disband the Militia? I'm sure that would have gone over real well. Forget our enemy nations, your own soldiers would have killed you." What had been going on inside Miles' head? Had he really believed that he wave a magic wand and turn the world back to the way it was?

"I wasn't going to dissolve the Republic, just…I don't know…change things." Miles had spent months plotting to kill him, but apparently he had no actual strategy as to how he was going to fix the problems he saw with the Republic. Monroe felt like punching Miles in the face for being such an idiot.

"Change things, right. Solid plan you had there." It would have served Miles right if he had pulled the trigger, then he would have been the one such making the ugly, but necessary calls. Miles had no idea how Monroe had protected his best friend's sanity and soul at cost to his own. He made the hardest choices, gave the most difficult orders, all so his friend could sleep better at night. Bass supposed it was true what they said about no good deed going unpunished.

"Why are we even talking about this? It's the past." Miles was right, he needed to focus on the moment at hand. He needed a counter offer, something he could trade for the pendant. It couldn't be Rachel, he needed her to build the amplifier for the pendant. It couldn't be Danny because if Rachel stopped cooperating he would need a hostage that he was actually capable of harming. Monroe's heart sank when he realized that his bargaining chip would have to be Charlie.

"You're right the past has no place in the present. Let's deal in the now. You want your niece and nephew released, but I'm afraid I can't make that happen. I will trade you Charlie, provided the price is right." He told himself that Charlie was a distraction and it would probably be better for the Republic if she was gone.

"Why Charlie and not Danny?"

"I have my reasons." There was no point in revealing the truth now. Miles would probably find a way to use it against him anyway.

"And what's this price?"

"The pendant."

"Pendant?" Monroe resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Miles' feigned ignorant.

"The pendant that Ben and Rachel were working on, the one that can bring the power back. Do we have a deal?" He knew if he let her go, her life expectancy would decrease dramatically, but he couldn't afford to think about that. It had been acceptable to protect her, so long as it didn't hurt the interests of the Republic. No one person, not even Charlie, could take precedent over his nation's safety.

"How did you know about the pendant?" Miles was just full of questions today wasn't he? Unfortunately for him the time had long since past when he was entitled to answers.

"Doesn't matter. Do we have a deal?" Monroe held his breath, fully aware that this moment might change the history of the world forever.

"No." Or perhaps not.

"Poor Charlie. She has such faith in you. I tried to warn her that trusting you just leads to disappointment, but she insisted, 'He won't leave me.' " Bass hoped that he could goad Miles into changing his mind. It all depended on how attached he'd gotten to Charlie over the past few months.

"If you hurt one hair on her head, I swear to God-" Bass cut off the clichéd threat.

"You'll what? Kill me? We've been down that road before." Miles' hands curled into fists. Apparently Charlie had broken through Miles' callused exterior to the warm gooey center.

"It was different last time. You didn't have my family held hostage." Family? That was a strange word coming from a man who'd spend only a few days a year with his relatives before the Blackout and (these past months excepted) no time with them after it. Well if 'family' suddenly meant so much to Miles, Bass could work with that.

"Which I would think gives me more leverage, not less. Tell you what: I've got brilliant solution to all our problems." Despite the over-the-top delivery, Bass' proposal really was ingenious. Certainly it would require a little comprise on everyone's part, but overall it would fix so much of what was wrong between them.

"Oh yeah. What's that?"

"You come back, pendant in hand, and we can wipe the slate clean. I'll come up with some bullshit story about you pretending to plot against me to smoke out traitors in our ranks." Until he'd received Miles' note, Bass hadn't spent too much time dwelling on what he'd do if he ever actually caught Miles. Maybe deep down, part of him thought that Miles would never be brought in. Maybe he hadn't wanted to face the question that would arise in the event of his capture. By the laws Miles should die for his crime. If Bass pardoned Miles for no other reason than the fact he missed him, he'd be putting himself above the laws of his country. Now circumstances had arisen where the good of the Republic and Bass' own desires aligned.

"And how would you explain my three-year absence and the standing orders to capture me?" Bass smiled. If Miles was asking questions, that meant he hadn't immediately rejected the proposal.

"All part of our brilliant ruse. We were hoping the Rebels would track you down and try to recruit you. You'd infiltrate their camp and pass along enough information that could stamp them out for good. It would be good for morale to have General Matheson exonerated, and we could certainly use you in planning the assaults on the other nations." Miles' eyes narrowed at the mention of 'other nations'.

"That's what you want the power for? You want to conquer Georgia and the Plain Nations?" Before they'd had the power Monroe and Miles had agreed their efforts should be focused on defending their borders and stamping out pockets of rebellion. Conquest had never been discussed because it hadn't been practical. Having power would change all that.

"And Texas and California." With the pendant the sky was limit. They needed to destroy their enemies in one fell swoop, until they all flew the flag of the Republic.

"Why stop there? You should take South America too. And while you're at it, why not Europe, and Asia? You know what scratch that, I say go for the whole thing. Why not conquer the whole damn world?" Monroe knew Miles was being sarcastic, but he couldn't agree with the sentiment more. There were eleven other pendant out there somewhere in the world and if one of them fell into the wrong hands, who knew what would happen. If someone was going to rule the world, he'd rather it be him.

"Exactly. Why not? If we had the power we could do anything. Who's going to resist us when we have tanks and helicopter and missiles? It would mean the end of war, Miles. There would be no more fighting because it would all be us. Isn't that what you wanted? And you'd have your niece and your nephew, safe and right by your side. I'll even throw in full pardons for your rebel friends. All I'm asking is that you come home." Would Miles see that this way was best for everyone? They could be brothers again, and finally fulfill their destiny, bringing about an order and peace that the world had never known before. With Miles' help maybe Monroe could even bring Charlie around. Miles had obviously managed to win the girl's love and forgiveness, and if he succeeded, why couldn't Monroe?

"I'm sorry." Monroe had never heard more beautiful words in his life.

"I forgive you." Miles slowly shook his head, and Monroe suddenly had a dark foreboding.

"No, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you all those years ago when you told me that my mission was insane. I'm sorry I didn't help you find my family. Most of all I'm sorry I turned you into this Bond villain. You want to rule the world? Why? You think if carve your name in every continent on the globe it will fill the void inside you? You think it's going to wipe away all the horrible things you've done. That's insane." Monroe's intestines twisted into angry writhing snakes. He'd had stomached Miles' shit for long enough. He was the victim here and yet when he offered a truce, he got slapped into the face.

"No more insane than thinking freeing those to kids is going to absolve you of your crimes."

"This isn't about absolution. This is about family." There it was again, 'family'. What a joke.

"Sharing DNA with someone doesn't make them your family. Before this all started I doubt you spent a full 24 hours with those kids. You don't know them and they don't know you."

"Blood is still blood." Monroe was so angry he could barely see straight. After everything he and Miles had been through together, Miles was really going expound on the importance of shared genetics. Monroe wanted to hurt him, to slap Miles and his new philosophy in the face the only way he knew how.

"Not in Charlie's case it's not." Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice whispered that this was a mistake, but it was hard to listen with the blood pumping in his ears.

"What are you talking about?"

"Ben wasn't Charlie's biological father, I am." Miles didn't speak for a full fifteen seconds.

"You're lying," Miles choked out.

"Am I? You spent the last two months with Charlie. Is there anything about her, physical or otherwise, that remotely resembles Ben?" Miles went quiet again, probably creating a mental list of Charlie's attributes and cross checking them with his brother's. Miles frowned, and stared at Bass with a horrified incredulity.

"You and Rachel?" The way he said it was priceless, just the right mixture of disgust and disbelief. Monroe didn't mind. At least now Miles had a fraction of an idea how it felt to be betrayed.

"That's right; I banged your sister-in-law on the night of Ben's bachelor party and nine months later out popped Charlie. So you see she's my family, not yours." Charlie would be his, Monroe suddenly decided. He was General Sebastian Monroe, leader of men, president of a nation, and future ruler of the world. He could certainly win over one stubborn 20-year-old girl. He would have a family again.

"She hates you. She will never be your family." Miles' words echoed the doubts in Monroe's mind, but he pushed them away. With enough determination and time, there was nothing he could do. That was why he still wasn't ready to completely give up on Miles. His brother had been weak and lost his way, but Monroe was strong. He'd pull Miles back from the edge if he had to yank him by his short hairs to do it.

Monroe slowly reached down and drew the knife from his boot. Within seconds another knife appeared in Miles' hand. Great minds still thought alike after all. Monroe shook his head and walked over to a nearby tree. He carved an upside down 'v' in the truck while Miles watched suspiciously. Monroe turned to Miles.

"When you finally come to your senses, finish carving the 'M' in the bark of this tree." Without another word Monroe started walking away. After about twenty feet he paused and called over his shoulder. "Oh, and Miles? Don't wait too long. I'll have you and the pendant, one way or the other. For both our sakes, don't make it the other."

On his way back Philly, Monroe considered his conversation with Miles. It was true it hadn't immediately borne fruit, but he'd definitely planted some important seeds. All that was left to do was await the harvest. Miles was stubborn, but he wasn't stupid. Eventually he'd have to concede that the deal Monroe offered was the best one he was going to get. Monroe would have to choose a trusted scout to routinely check from Miles' signal. Hopefully it wouldn't take more than a few weeks for Miles to come around. That just left Charlie, who would present more of a challenge. Fortunately it was a twenty-minute stroll back to the city, plenty of time to formulate a solid strategy. Monroe inhaled the clear night air, feeling more optimistic than he had in years. He was due for things to start going his way.


	19. Uncle Fishy

Bass woke to the sounds of birds chirping. He lay on his back, taking in the full effect of the sunlight filtering through the canopy of leaves. It was hard to believe that a year ago he was being woken up by at the crack of dawn by a blow horn. Suddenly he heard an odd scraping intermingled with the sounds of the forest. Bass sat up and looked around.

Fifteen feet away Ben was diligently striking a piece of flint against a piece of steel. A spark finally leapt to the char cloth Ben had lain on the ground. Ben dropped the steel and flint and picked up the char cloth. He quickly folded the cloth dropped into the center of a small bird's nest. Next he picked up the nest and stood up. Bass watched as Ben blew into the twigs, trying to coax a flame to life. At last Bass saw a trickle of smoke rising from Ben's cupped hand. He carefully placed the nest into the tepee of sticks and smiled with pride. Bass clapped, causing the older man to look over at him.

"Very nice. Your scout master would be proud." Ben had been in the Boy Scouts for six years and had earned his way all the way to Eagle Scout. Marie had wanted Miles to join as well, but Miles had declared that the entire organization was stupid and a waste of time. Bass strongly suspected that this attitude had less to do with the Scouts than it did with the fact that Bass' foster family would never have paid to let him join.

"Don't knock the Boy Scouts, Bass. The stuff I learned from them has helped us survive this past year." Bass didn't doubt that for a minute. The little survival training Miles and Bass had gotten from the Marines hadn't nearly prepared them for the constant struggle of surviving in a world without supermarkets and clean running water. They'd been lucky that their aptitude for handling human threats had prompted people with diverse different skill sets to join them.

Bass had to admit that there had been benefits to communal living. Bass was still not a wilderness expert by any means, but he'd acquire enough knowledge to feed and warm himself.

"Don't be so defensive, I wasn't mocking you. I know from firsthand experience that lighting fires without matches is not as easy as it looks." Bass thought of the hours he'd spend mastering how to start a fire using two sticks and grimaced.

"Thanks." Ben smiled at Bass and sat back down on to a log to admire his handiwork.

"You're welcome. Now, what can do to help?" These days survival was a full time occupation and Bass wanted to stay busy. The longer he could avoid thinking about all the information that had been dumped on him last night, the better.

"You've done enough already. Besides you're our guest." It was so typically Ben to holding on to the polite traditions of a world that had ended.

"I appreciate your graciousness as a host, but it's the end of the world. This is not arguing about who is responsible for doing the dishes." It was silly to pretend hold on to etiquette rules that no longer made sense. Staying alive these days meant that everyone pitched in.

"Can you believe we used to argue over things like that? Seems like another lifetime, another world. Everything's changed." Ben stared into the fire, his face growing solemn. Bass had to acknowledge that Ben was right. The old Ben was never prone to these sudden, dark moods. Bass decided he didn't like the change. He cast his eyes around for something to pull Ben out of his funk.

Bass' gaze fell on a dark object partially concealed by the log Ben sat on. He picked it up and examined it. It was one of the burnt pieces of meat that Ben had served for dinner last night. One of the kids must have snuck it off their plate when no one was looking. Bass dropped the meat onto Ben's lap and sat down next to him.

"I'll tell one thing that hasn't changed; you're still a terrible cook. You haven't learned by now to let Rachel handle the culinary arts?" Ben shook his head slightly and rolled his eyes.

"Just because we're living like cavemen, doesn't mean we need to return to Stone Age gender roles." Bass held up his hands defensively.

"Oh, I don't think Rachel should do the cooking because she's a woman. I think she should do it because she is way better at it than you." A reluctant grin made its way across Ben's face.

"Thank you very much Chef Ramsey. You kind words are deeply appreciated." Bass smiled at the popular culture reference. At least Ben was now focused on happier memories of the past.

"Do you think he's still alive? Gordon Ramsey?" Bass tried to imagine a post Blackout version of _Hell's Kitchen. "Is the fried squirrel! It should have been done twenty minutes ago! God you've completely over-cooked it. Are you completely incompetent! This is a disaster. This is a F*****disaster!"_

"If he is I'd guarantee you he's a much less picky eater." Ben had a point. Gourmet dining was definitely a thing of the past.

"What was that we ate last night anyway?" Bass had been too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice what he was putting in his mouth. Judging by the leftovers he'd found, that probably wasn't a bad thing.

"Raccoon." It wasn't anywhere near the most disgusting thing Bass had eaten since the Blackout, but it definitely made him reflect fondly on earlier days.

"Damn, do I miss McDonalds. I'd kill for a quarter pounder right about now." His mouth watered at the memory of the juice beef patty topped with cheese, onions, and pickles.

"Not me. I'd take a fish filet." The words "fish filet" gave Bass an idea.

"You want a fish filet? Because I can get you a fish filet, just point me to the nearest body of water." Fishing had become Bass' specialty in recent months. He could catch fish in three different ways without ever using a pole.

"There's a pond about thirty minutes east of here. It's full of fish, not that I've been able to get my hands on a single one." Ben shook his head ruefully at the memory.

"What, they didn't have "Introduction to Trout Tickling" at the University of Chicago?" Although Bass was joking, a part of him felt bad for Ben. He'd spent years in school earning a Bachelor's, a Master's, and finally a Doctorate, never knowing he would have been better off practicing sticking his arm into a river and snatching fish that swam too close.

"Oddly enough, no. Nor did they have a seminar in spear throwing. To think that they promised to equip me with the skills I'd need for my future life. I should track down the dean right now and demand my money back."

"And if you got it back, what would you do? Use the bills as tinder for a fire?" Bartering was the primary system of economics these days. Nobody needed green pieces of paper anymore.

"It's strange how quickly something can go from being valuable to completely worthless, isn't it?" Ben abruptly turned away, but not before Bass had caught a flicker of emotion across his face. It was the same look he'd seen when Bass had told Ben he'd only get in the way of Rachel's rescue. It hit Bass that Ben hadn't just been talking about money; he'd been talking about himself.

Before the Blackout Ben was an excellent provider for his family. After the Blackout the things like being well educated, and having a good job no longer meant anything. Ben had lost the ability to take care of his family and it was eating him alive.

"What time a day did you try to skewer those fish onto your spear?" Bass had betrayed Ben and he'd never be able to make that right, but he could at least offer some advice that would keep him from feeling useless.

"The afternoon, why?"

"It would have been easier at night. That's when the fish come to the surface of the water." A man name Henry Dwight had tutored Bass in the fine art of angling with a sharp stick. It had taken several moonlight nights in various small ponds, but eventually Bass had mastered the knack.

"Seriously?" Bass laughed at Ben's deadpan expression.

"Trust me, I am Bass the Fish Whisperer." Bass heard a twig snap behind him. He turned and found Charlie a few feet away. She had already changed out of her Dora the Explorer pajamas and back into her tee-shirt and shorts.

"You talk to fish?" Charlie cocked her head to one side as she waited for an answer. Unfortunately Bass had suddenly lost the ability to form coherent thought. The words _She's my daughter. She's my daughter. She's my daughter_, played on a perpetual loop inside his head, making it hard to concentrate.

"Uh, Charlie, hi. I didn't see you there." Bass resisted the urge to slap his forehead. Could he possibly sound any more awkward?

"Hi. So, can you talk to fish?" Bass swallowed and tried to come up with an appropriate response. He told him he would be fine. He'd been able to talk to her yesterday without too much difficulty. Of course that was before he'd know for certain that she was his daughter. It shouldn't have mattered, but somehow it did. He should try a joke. Kids liked jokes, didn't they?

"Anyone can talk to fish. The trick would be getting them to talk back." Charlie stared at him, frowning in confusion. Bass was clearly no Jerry Seinfeld. Behind him, Ben chuckled at Bass' less than successful attempt at humor. Bass turned to glare at him, which only made Ben laugh harder. When Ben recovered himself, he walked over to stand beside Bass.

"I don't think I officially introduce you two last night. Bass, this is my daughter, Charlie. Charlie, this is my old friend Bass. Why don't you two get to know each other while I go get some more wood for the fire." Ben ignored Bass' silent plea not to go and strolled off into the woods, leaving Bass alone with the seven-year-old.

"Aren't bass a kind of fish?" It took Bass a moment to understand Charlie's question. Of course she would ask about his name. He had to admit that objectively 'Bass' sounded strange the first time you heard it.

"They are. Feel free to call me Uncle Fishy." Bass couldn't believe the things that were flying out of his mouth. Uncle Fishy? Really? He needed a muzzle.

"Why do you whisper to fish?" How could he explain his joke to someone who had never seen the movie _The Horse Whisper_?

"I don't. I was joking with your dad about being such a good fisherman. In fact I need to go the lake and catch some for your family." Bass scanned the campsite for reinforcements. Where was Rachel? He couldn't leave Charlie here by herself, but he also wanted to end this conversation before he'd succeeded in convincing Charlie he was a complete idiot.

"You're leaving?" Charlie sounded surprisingly disappointed. Maybe he wasn't making as bad an impression as he'd feared. The thought lifted Bass' spirits considerably.

"Just for a few hours. I'll come back later tonight with my catch." And hopefully the ability to string intelligible sentences together.

"Can I come?" Charlie's request took him completely by surprise. He'd assumed that after last night Charlie would want to spend the day clinging to her mother's side. The kid was tough, he'd give her that.

"If your Mom says okay, then sure." The words tumbled from his mouth before he'd had the chance to stop them. What was he thinking? If he couldn't keep it together for a one-minute conversation, how would he be able to last for the hours it would take to catch enough fish to feed five people?

"If I say what is okay?" Bass froze at the sound of the voice behind him. People were sneaking up on him way too easily today.

"Mommy, can I go to the lake with Uncle Fishy?" Bass turned to look at Rachel, not at all certain what her reaction would be.

"Uncle…what?" Rachel raised her eyebrows at his ridiculous new nickname.

"Uncle Fishy. He said it was okay with him of it was okay with you. Can I go? Please, please, please?" Rachel's lips pressed together in a solemn line. Bass' stomach sank. While Charlie's eagerness to spend time with him was a definite ego boost, Rachel's reluctance to let her was not. Finally Rachel smiled down at Charlie.

"Tell you what, why don't take these berries over to your brother and you two can have breakfast while I talk to Uncle Fishy." Rachel bent down and passed Charlie the bowl she'd been carrying. Once Charlie was out of earshot, Rachel turned back to Bass.

"So, a day at the lake with Charlie? Sounds fun." Bass didn't know what to make of her tone, but he decided to go on the defensive as a precaution.

"I didn't ask her to come."

"But you said yes when she asked." Rachel was still completely unreadable and it was starting to piss him off.

"What's the problem Rachel? She'll be safe with me, you know that." Bass might not be the world's best babysitter, but at the very least he could be relied on to protect Charlie from serious harm.

"It is not her physical safety that concerns me. I'm worried about the effect spending time with you is going to have on Charlie." Bass blinked at the verbal slap, which had caught him completely off-guard. Last night Rachel was perfectly willing to share partial credit with him for helping to create Charlie and this morning she was convinced he was a bad influence Charlie had to be protected from. Her attitude changes were giving him whiplash.

"You're nervous my vices are going rub off on her?" What kind of corruption did Rachel think he was going to expose Charlie to? Did she think he was going to slip her alcohol or teach her curse words?

"I'm afraid you're going to make her love you." Once again Rachel completely blind-sided him.

"What are you talking about?" Rachel sighed and ran a hand through her long blonde hair.

"Bass, she's known you for less than a day and she's already in awe of you. She knows you saved my life and that makes you a superhero to her. Add that to your being the way you are and she could become very attached, very quickly." Bass didn't know how to respond at first. Rachel had to be wrong. The girl had just watched him make a complete ass of himself. If she wanted to keep hanging around him it had to only be to see what stupid thing he was going to say next. And what had Rachel meant by , "The way you are,"?

"'The way I am'? What does that mean?" Rachel pursed her lips and shot him her annoyed look.

"Come on Bass, you know what I mean." For once, Rachel was wrong. He didn't have the slightest idea what she was talking about.

"No, I don't." Rachel squinted at him, trying to judge if he was serious or not. Bass shrugged his shoulders in genuine confusion.

"You have this…charisma that draws people in. You have to know that." Bass thought back to his school days. He had always been popular with his fellow classmates, but he'd always assumed that was because he worked at it. He'd learned to funny, and to project confidence. He took care of his personal appearance as best he could, and worked hard to make the most out of his natural athleticism. He'd also been gifted with good looks, if he did say so himself. The combination of all those things was what made people like him, not some indefinable aura.

"Even if you're right, what is your point? What would be so wrong with Charlie liking me?" It wasn't like he was trying to take Ben's place; that ship had sailed years ago. What was so bad about Charlie caring about him?

"Charlie's been through enough already without having to her heart broken by you." It was nice to know Rachel had such a high opinion of his character.

"You're so sure I'll break it." Did Rachel think he was some kind of a monster? He would NEVER deliberately hurt Charlie.

"Have you made up your mind about what you're going to do about Miles?" Rachel's question stopped him short.

"No." He'd wrestled with the decision for hours last night and still he had no answer. For a decision this big, he needed more time.

"So you don't know whether you'll be sticking around. You don't know if you'll be here for another day, or week, or month. When you do finally leave, you don't know when or if you'll be coming back again. All I ask is that until do you know, you'll be careful. Can you do that?" As much as he hated to admit it, Rachel was right.

"Yeah, I can do that." He looked over at Charlie, who caught his gaze and smiled at him. She was so beautiful, the spitting image of Rachel. The photograph he had of her didn't do her justice. He felt an odd tugging sensation inside his chest. Rachel was worried that he'd steal Charlie's heart, but Bass was starting to think that the real danger was to his.

"Good. Then I wish you luck on your fishing expedition."


End file.
